मैक्सिमम रिस्क

This Jean-Claude Van Damme action vehicle gets good marks for sound, low profanity, some very good action scenes and some interesting characters that keep your attention. It loses marks for excessive violence, too much "Rambo" mentality (good guys don't get hit despite a barrage of bullets) and, yet, another modern-day film in which the FBI is corrupt.

This is also another of these action films that has TOO much action. It would be better with some more lulls. It almost gets ridiculous in spots. Nevertheless, some of the scenes such as car chases, fires and explosions are so well-done you have to admire the great stunt work in here. Man, those stunt men earn their money!

You would be hard-pressed to find two leads in any film with the bodies of Van Damme and Natasha Henstridge and neither are shy about showing them off, so you have the usual gratuitous sex scenes, but they are brief, as is the profanity. This is a loud film. If you have good speakers, be ready to have the room shake with lots of bass.

Overall, it's about 100 minutes of mindless but entertaining diversion.

As a Van Damme fan when i saw this film i was instantly blown away.The only thing i didn't like was the brother storyline again.How many brothers has this guy got.But seriously this is an action movie from start to finish.There is car chases, fights, and of course a beautiful woman.What more could you ask for?.Well nothing really,this movie has it all and to think it was from the start of Van Damme's drug taking days.He must have been on drugs to make Double Team which is'nt bad film ,just bad actors (Dennis Rodman).Any way Maximum Risk is a movie that will have you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.The fight scenes are great and well directed.And it has Natasha Henstridge who acts well and puts on a decent performance.She is also easy on the eye in more ways than one.

As this film opens a man is chased through the city of Nice; just as it looks as if he has escaped his pursuers he has an accident and is killed. We are then introduced to our protagonist, Alain Moreau, who looks identical to the dead man. Alain is a French policeman who was unaware that he had an identical twin who was adopted when he was still a baby. He determines to solve his brother's murder. This investigation will take him to New York where he will end up confronting the Russian Mafia, in which his brother was involved.

I really enjoyed this film; it is full of impressive action as well as a few twists. The first twist comes surprisingly early on with the death of Alain's brother... the opening chase feels as though it showing us the man destined to be the protagonist not somebody who is about to die. Having a protagonist who is a twin of the character might feel a bit cliché but it works to give him motivation and lead to others not realising they are facing Alain rather than his twin. There is a lot of impressive action; this is nicely varied with shooting, martial arts, vehicle chases and the occasional explosion. The acting is pretty good; Van Damme is on really good form as Alain, and twin Mikhail, and Natasha Henstridge is good as Mikhail's girlfriend; the rest of the cast are solid even though many are just there to be beaten up by Van Damme! Overall I wouldn't say this is a classic but I'd definitely recommend it to action fans.

This has to be the best Jean-Claude Van Damme action movie he has made. It has it all, and it has it in spades. This movie is 100 minutes, and 95 of those are pure action.

You have great car chases through the streets of Nice and New York.

You have a whole lot of people the Government is not going to have to arrest and try because they will not be around.

You have three, count them three outstanding fights between Jean-Claude Van Damme and the biggest, baddest dude you can imagine.

And, you have Natasha Henstridge in the bathroom making love and giving us a view we will long remember.

What more can you ask for?

While not necessarily one of my favorites from his more "classic" collection (Bloodsport, Kickboxer, etc.), I give this one a lot of credit for creating an overall highly suspenseful experience, full of intense action/chase sequences, and with more of a story than many other action-oriented efforts in its class. The script by Larry Ferguson (writer of The Hunt for Red October and definitely one of the more respected people to pen a Van Damme movie) places storytelling over action setups and, in general, feels a bit smarter than the average Van Damme vehicle. There isn't any real mystery to the story, though: the revelation of Alain's brother and his affiliation with the Russian mafia is dealt with without too much buildup, and the story begins to revolve around Alain retreading his brother's unsuccessful steps to distance himself from the mob and escape from corrupt FBI agents. His relationship with his brother's old flame (Natasha Henstridge, Species) is interesting at first but is then more or less dropped into your lap. Nevertheless, the movie never loses a sense of suspense: Alain doesn't seem quite as empowered as other characters Van Damme was playing at the time, so it rarely seems impossible that he could be killed. Soundly-weighed production values by director Lam help set a good mood and the art direction is, at times, inspired.

The film features a pretty good cast, including Jean-Hugues Anglade (Betty Blue) as Alain's partner and David Hemblen (Exotica) in a limited role as the leader of the Russian mafia, but the unexpected dramatic moment of the picture belongs to Van Damme for a surprisingly adept instance of silent acting near the end of the movie wherein Alain listens to a recorded message by his late brother. Ringo Lam would continue to bring a little something extra out of Jean-Claude in the future, even directing him to his first-ever dramatic award nomination five years later, but "Maximum Risk" is probably the most palatable of all their collaborations for its all-around strengths and mainstream appeal.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10.