Double Team - Gioco di squadra

Continuing the tradition of successful Hong Kong directors going to Hollywood only to end up directing Jean-Claude Van Damme movies comes Tsui Hark with 'Double Team'. John Woo must have gotten lucky when he went to Hollywood: Ringo Lam is still making Van Damme movies, and Tsui Hark went back to Hong Kong after this and 'Knock Off'. I have nothing against Van Damme, but he seems to be some sort of trial-by-fire for any Hong Kong director with ambitions of making action films in Hollywood: If a director succeeds, he go on to Dolph Lundgren and then mainstream Hollywood action (John Woo), otherwise the director is faced with sticking with Van Damme movies or going back to Hong Kong.

Counter-terrorist Jack Quinn (Van Damme) is planning to retire after one final mission to nail the villainous Stavros (Mickey Rourke). The mission goes incredibly wrong: Stravos gets away, but somehow his son is killed in the cross-fire. Out for revenge, Stavros kidnaps the pregnant Kathryn Quinn (Natacha Lindinger), and the only way Jack can save is wife is team up with Yaz (Dennis Rodman) and kick-box his way to a happy ending.

Watching 'Double Team', I thought it was pretty clear than even Van Damme realizes that his movies are a joke to all but the most hardcore of action fans. Australian sketch comedy show 'Full Frontal' (featuring a not-so-famous Eric Bana) regularly took stabs at Van Damme for a good year or so ("YOU LAUGHTER CRACKIN' AT ME? ARRRGGGHHHHH!"), coincidentally around when 'Double Team' would have been released. At no point does 'Double Team' make any attempt to be taken as a serious action movie. All the fight scenes are played for laughs, if only slight chuckles. Van Damme gets to fight a tiger and use a coke-machine to shield himself from an explosion. All it really amounts to be is 90 minutes of action fun.

While fans of director Tsui Hark would be disappointed with this effort, something good came of Hark's short-lived collaborations with Van Damme: He went back to Hong Kong and directed the incredibly awesome 'Time and Tide' (which did not feature Jean-Claude Van Damme at all).

'Double Team' doesn't come to close to being one of Van Damme's best, and it might not even please hard-core Van Damme fans, but its all in good fun - 5/10

Double Team has to be seen to be believed. Hell, even the poster does. It exists in that delirious wasteland of the late 90's action genre, a place where anything can, and does go. As the genre evolved, the scientists deep within Hollywood's labs were trying out endless mind boggling action star team ups, even using a few celebrities that had never had a film to their name. In this particular twilight zone we get Jean Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman sharing a spotlight. There's a pairing for ya. Van Damme plays a counter terrorist expert who miserably fails in preventing an attack from dangerous villain Stavros (Mickey Rourke), and is sent to The Colony, where disgraced agents are branded with all the snazzy technology the 90's had to offer, after which being sent back into duty. He needs inside helps to track down Stavros, and finds it in beyond eccentric arms dealer Yaz (Rodman), a whacko who mirrors the man's overblown real life persona. Together they make a run at Rourke, fireworks ensue, blah blah. It's a crappy flick made noticeable by the strange presence of Rodman, and marginally watchable by Rourke, who actually gives Stavros the tiniest glint of surprising gravity, despite how downright silly the whole enterprise is. Loaded with cheese, dated special effects and clichés, it ain't no picnic, but worth a glance during an inebriated late night channel switching blitz.

The script for Double Team was originally called "The Colony" and by several accounts, it was actually quite good. Apparently, it went through many major alterations on its way to production until the final product bore little resemblance in tone and quality to the original script. Does this mean Double Team is a disaster? Not really, but its clear all the changes created some problems.

On the one hand, you have the participation of famed Hong Kong director Tsui Hark and world-class cinematographer Peter Pau. They manage to create some of the coolest, trippiest, most fantastical visuals this side of a MTV video and better still, do so without the excessively choppy editing that usually accompanies "MTV-style" films. You actually get to appreciate the luxuriously-shot images, though the film is by no means slow-paced. Better still, it's one of the few Van Damme movies that realizes the best Van Damme movies are the ones which absolutely never rely on Van Damme's acting (or anyone else's for that matter) to carry the film along. It's all action, goofily entertaining plot twists, and sweet visuals. As an action-packed, overblown, eye-candy fantasy, Double Team works very well.

On the other hand, it's painfully obvious that Double Team used to have a smarter script which called for a far more subtle and serious approach. Had these "intelligent" elements been completely erased or dumbed-down for the final product, this wouldn't have been a problem. However, it seems that some of the more subtle plot developments were left in and they do NOT mesh well with Tsui's and the rest of the final script's "jackhammer" approach to the story. For example, at one point a prescription label left on the wall is supposed to be noticed by Van Damme's character who then uses the name of the doctor on the label as a clue. However, unless you're paying very very close attention you'd never know that. It's so small on screen, the label may as well have been blank. And the shot where the label is taken off the prescription bottle is far too quick and unclear. A single extra shot showing a closeup of the label would've cleared things up immensely. But it never happens. The film contains several instances like this where a single clarifying shot or an extra line of explanatory dialogue would've made things much clearer. The result is that what seem like glaring plot holes (even for this kind of movie) are in fact due to badly explained plot points. Such an obscure presentation might have worked on a quieter, more "intelligent" spy film where the audience knows they aren't going to be spoon-fed the plot. But after 40 minutes of terrible one-liners and ridiculous action, the last thing that should be required of Double Team's audience is to suddenly pay close attention to what's happening.

I don't know whether Tsui Hark was trying to keep in some subtle elements while reconciling it with the rapid-fire approach, or whether he just didn't care about such details and wanted to keep things moving (Probably the latter, as his subsequent movie, Knock Off, experimented with this abstract, to-hell-with-storytelling visual approach to the nth degree). Whatever the case, the result is a pretty wild but somewhat confusing action movie that could've been much better with minor changes.

Movie itself it quite catchy - the fight of Jack with Asian man in the hotel room was the best, imho...

But some things are under critics. Like exploding on the arena - when eventually whole the building is got blown away - what 'bad guy' of Mickey Rourke was thinking about when placing mines of such explosive power there? :) Or what was on 'good guy' of Dennis Rodman's mind when swapping some mine marks? To play the game 'who dies first - good Jack or bad Stavros? A big number of gotchas that may be forgiven only because it's just an action. Plain action with good fights and explosions...

If you're into your eighties/nineties action movies, you should probably appreciate muscle-bound heroes thumping hordes of bad-guys into submission. Yes, the films are hardly 'high brow,' but enjoyable if you're in the right mood. Jean Claude Van Damme has starred in plenty of cheesy 'so-bad-they're-good' films such as 'Kickboxer, Bloodsport' and 'Universal Solider.' However, despite 'Double Team' - sort of - fitting into that genre, it's one you could probably pass on, unless you really need your fix of the 'Muscles From Brussels.'

JCVD plays, er, some sort of special ops soldier who, er, ends up fighting bad guys. Do you really need a plot synopsis? He kicks, he punches and he shoots his way through the usual faceless henchmen, but - and here is about the film's only real stand-out selling point - he does it alongside NBA megastar Dennis Rodman.

By all accounts Rodman hasn't starred in too many films and, based on what I saw here, that's quite a shame. I know he's allegedly a bit of a diva in real life and nowadays has 'questionable' friendships, but (in 'Double Team' at least) he really is quite a larger-than-life character and steals every scene from the more 'straight-laced' Van Damme. They play off each other really well and Rodman comes across as a taller, even more flamboyant Wesley Snipes from 'Demolition Man.'

'Double Team' is an okay film in terms of action and plot - there's nothing you haven't seen much before. If you're a Van Damme mega-fan then you could probably do worse than sitting through this - it's only an hour and a half and it's hardly 'hard going.' Plus if you're at all curious as to see how Rodman fairs on screen then this will answer all your questions - it's just a shame he doesn't really - properly - come into it until the final third. The bad guy is Mickey Rourke, but don't expect too much from him as he's barely on screen and I didn't even know it was him until I saw his name in the end credits!

If you like action B-movies like 'Under Siege' then 'Double Team' does fall short of that, which is a shame, as with a bit better writing and polish overall then it could have been a hidden gem rather than a background noise.