I realize that a lot of people actually enjoyed "Double Team", that its director Tsui Hark is a talented and hard working fellow responsible for some outstanding Hong Kong cinema in years past, and that Jean Claude Van Damme has at least managed to stay pretty buff even as his career declined (unlike his contemporary Steven "Make Mine KFC" Seagal).
But "Double Team" sounded the Death Knell for Van Damme's movie career, which was finished off and consigned to direct-to-video Hell by Hark's follow up "Knock Off" in 1998. (Although I felt that "Knock Off was mildly enjoyable, Hark's off-kilter approach and the 3rd rate screenplay made it tank big-time with American audiences).
It's not that the movie itself was all that bad to look at.It's obviously the work of professionals. The hyper-kinetic camera work and meth-driven action sequences are pretty much what we've come to expect from Hark and his colleagues, there's some reasonably witty give and take in the dialog, a few decent one liners, etc., the actors are reasonably buff, etc. I tried to take all this into account, and all these mitigating elements help a little, but in the end, "Double Team" is obviously the Beginning Of The End.
Why?? Well, we've always known the Van Damme isn't an Actor, he's a Body (like, say, Marc Singer in "Beast Master"). He's only believable in a limited range of roles, and he's very limited in his dramatic range of emotions ( the thick accent has always been a hindrance ). And "Double Team" pretty much signaled that Hollywood had run out of things to do with him, that his fan base and audience was pretty much played out, and that every VD film from now on would be a retread or a derivative, 2nd rate mishegoss. Three major directors had made a shot at bringing him into the mainstream ("Hard Target", "Time Cop", and "Sudden Death"), and Van Damme had been decent-to-excellent in all of them...but all those directors had moved on and Van Damme was now back to making "B" movie fodder.
Or in the case of "Double Team" a 'freak show buddy movie' whose gimmick was that it starred Dennis Rodman as a giant Dennis Rodman. Rodman's whole gimmick as a celebrity (as opposed to his inarguable talent as a pro basketball player) is that he is "outrageous", and the movie stops repeatedly to let him BE outrageous, with various hi tech gimmicks and basketball-themed weapons that seemed to have been invented by your ninth-grade nephew. There are some potentially funny and incisive lines , but the delivery (by both Van Damme and Rodman) pretty much just lies there. Van Damme is particularly "off" in this movie, like he's just going through the motions until his hangover subsides or something.
So it's not a "real" movie, but just a strung together series of set pieces with testosterone-fueled muscle flexing and an almost complete lack of actual human emotion or feeling. Oh, a certain kind of audience will love this kind of thing, but somehow, this particular movie seemed to permanently typecast Van Damme as a 2nd rater, a hack actor in the same vein as Rutger Hauer, Dolph Lundgren and, yes, Steven Seagal...All these actors also started off with a big splash in well designed vehicles that showcased their talents...and then faded into B-to-Z movie hackdom as the casting agencies and action directors moved on to other, fresher faces.
For all his limitations as an actor and an action star, I've always enjoyed Van Damme - he's good looking, he is capable of mild wit and self deprecating humor, and he works hard at maintaining his physique in a career phase where a lot of his action star peers from the same period have let themselves go and have to suck their guts in and hope for a good camera angle. I was sad to see him going through the motions in this silly half-baked excuse for a screenplay.
But "Double Team" sounded the Death Knell for Van Damme's movie career, which was finished off and consigned to direct-to-video Hell by Hark's follow up "Knock Off" in 1998. (Although I felt that "Knock Off was mildly enjoyable, Hark's off-kilter approach and the 3rd rate screenplay made it tank big-time with American audiences).
It's not that the movie itself was all that bad to look at.It's obviously the work of professionals. The hyper-kinetic camera work and meth-driven action sequences are pretty much what we've come to expect from Hark and his colleagues, there's some reasonably witty give and take in the dialog, a few decent one liners, etc., the actors are reasonably buff, etc. I tried to take all this into account, and all these mitigating elements help a little, but in the end, "Double Team" is obviously the Beginning Of The End.
Why?? Well, we've always known the Van Damme isn't an Actor, he's a Body (like, say, Marc Singer in "Beast Master"). He's only believable in a limited range of roles, and he's very limited in his dramatic range of emotions ( the thick accent has always been a hindrance ). And "Double Team" pretty much signaled that Hollywood had run out of things to do with him, that his fan base and audience was pretty much played out, and that every VD film from now on would be a retread or a derivative, 2nd rate mishegoss. Three major directors had made a shot at bringing him into the mainstream ("Hard Target", "Time Cop", and "Sudden Death"), and Van Damme had been decent-to-excellent in all of them...but all those directors had moved on and Van Damme was now back to making "B" movie fodder.
Or in the case of "Double Team" a 'freak show buddy movie' whose gimmick was that it starred Dennis Rodman as a giant Dennis Rodman. Rodman's whole gimmick as a celebrity (as opposed to his inarguable talent as a pro basketball player) is that he is "outrageous", and the movie stops repeatedly to let him BE outrageous, with various hi tech gimmicks and basketball-themed weapons that seemed to have been invented by your ninth-grade nephew. There are some potentially funny and incisive lines , but the delivery (by both Van Damme and Rodman) pretty much just lies there. Van Damme is particularly "off" in this movie, like he's just going through the motions until his hangover subsides or something.
So it's not a "real" movie, but just a strung together series of set pieces with testosterone-fueled muscle flexing and an almost complete lack of actual human emotion or feeling. Oh, a certain kind of audience will love this kind of thing, but somehow, this particular movie seemed to permanently typecast Van Damme as a 2nd rater, a hack actor in the same vein as Rutger Hauer, Dolph Lundgren and, yes, Steven Seagal...All these actors also started off with a big splash in well designed vehicles that showcased their talents...and then faded into B-to-Z movie hackdom as the casting agencies and action directors moved on to other, fresher faces.
For all his limitations as an actor and an action star, I've always enjoyed Van Damme - he's good looking, he is capable of mild wit and self deprecating humor, and he works hard at maintaining his physique in a career phase where a lot of his action star peers from the same period have let themselves go and have to suck their guts in and hope for a good camera angle. I was sad to see him going through the motions in this silly half-baked excuse for a screenplay.