Despite the strong start, Van Damme movies certainly fell off in quality as the 90's went on. DOUBLE TEAM is easily one of his lesser efforts despite some inspired casting and a few somewhat new ideas. Unfortunately, you've seen almost all of it before, including the name, which is almost indistinguishable from DOUBLE IMPACT or DEATH WARRANT. The idea of Van Damme teaming up with Dennis Rodman is so ludicrous that it's worthwhile for novelty
and the icing on the cake is that the two team up against Mickey Rourke
and have a 3-way shirtless fistfight in what I assume is supposed to be the Roman Coliseum (plenty of shades of RETURN OF THE DRAGON) at the end too
with a Tiger and landmines to boot!
Well, the overall plot about Van Damme's pregnant wife getting kidnapped so Rourke can replace his adopted son with Van Damme's (?) doesn't amount to a hill of beans and quite poorly links together its many action sequences. The only neat non-action bit is a long section dealing with Van Damme going off the grid and joining a "colony" of other former CIA agents who have faked their own deaths. The flipside is that this lifestyle isn't quite utopic and ends up being a prison (a la "The Prisoner") for Van Damme as he's playing the same revenge-driven character he always plays. Rourke and Rodman are equally 1-dimensional and Rodman manages to change his costume (and hairstyle) repeatedly between scenes which supposedly take place on the same day! It turns out that the whole faking-his-death thing was completely pointless as the first thing Van Damme does when he escapes it to lure Rourke into a trap which he blows right away once he spots his wife and tries to run after her but whatever, we're not in this sort of thing because of the story. We're here to see Van Damme kick people in the face and break things.
Unfortunately it's marred heavily with lots of intentional humor and bad basketball-related one-liners from Rodman's character, who I'm pretty sure isn't far different from Rodman himself. See? If your actors can't act, just not have them even bother trying to take on characters. Works like a charm.
Fans of Italian crime and action movies will have a field day spotting cameos by some genre stalwarts. Bruno Bilotta (aka Karl Landgren), star of numerous poor 80's exploitation films, plays Rourke's main sniper and even scores a fight scene with Van Damme! Ottaviano Dell'Acqua plays a random Italian agent gunned down in glorious slow motion while Angelo Ragusa gets stabbed in the back and shot by a pair of not-so-helpless women. Ted Rusoff (a perennial figure in the world of ADR and voice dubbing going back to the AIP days of Samuel Z. Arkoff) plays a monk for the umpteenth time and even eurocrime great Orso Maria Guerrini is wasted in a nothing background role with no lines!
This is no exception to the endless cycle of Van Damme teaming up with Hong Kong directors to attempt to repeat the same success as HARD TARGET and do for the likes of Ringo Lam what that film did for John Woo. Director Tsui Hark makes sure to throw in some patented kung fu fight scenes complete with plenty of gunplay, knifeplay, and attempts at strangulation. Add to that a complete overboard use of dutch angles and requisite poor CGI to make one generic 90's action movie experience complete! Worth it just to see Van Damme side-kick a growling tiger in the face, even if it does seem more the work of VFX than choreography.
Well, the overall plot about Van Damme's pregnant wife getting kidnapped so Rourke can replace his adopted son with Van Damme's (?) doesn't amount to a hill of beans and quite poorly links together its many action sequences. The only neat non-action bit is a long section dealing with Van Damme going off the grid and joining a "colony" of other former CIA agents who have faked their own deaths. The flipside is that this lifestyle isn't quite utopic and ends up being a prison (a la "The Prisoner") for Van Damme as he's playing the same revenge-driven character he always plays. Rourke and Rodman are equally 1-dimensional and Rodman manages to change his costume (and hairstyle) repeatedly between scenes which supposedly take place on the same day! It turns out that the whole faking-his-death thing was completely pointless as the first thing Van Damme does when he escapes it to lure Rourke into a trap which he blows right away once he spots his wife and tries to run after her but whatever, we're not in this sort of thing because of the story. We're here to see Van Damme kick people in the face and break things.
Unfortunately it's marred heavily with lots of intentional humor and bad basketball-related one-liners from Rodman's character, who I'm pretty sure isn't far different from Rodman himself. See? If your actors can't act, just not have them even bother trying to take on characters. Works like a charm.
Fans of Italian crime and action movies will have a field day spotting cameos by some genre stalwarts. Bruno Bilotta (aka Karl Landgren), star of numerous poor 80's exploitation films, plays Rourke's main sniper and even scores a fight scene with Van Damme! Ottaviano Dell'Acqua plays a random Italian agent gunned down in glorious slow motion while Angelo Ragusa gets stabbed in the back and shot by a pair of not-so-helpless women. Ted Rusoff (a perennial figure in the world of ADR and voice dubbing going back to the AIP days of Samuel Z. Arkoff) plays a monk for the umpteenth time and even eurocrime great Orso Maria Guerrini is wasted in a nothing background role with no lines!
This is no exception to the endless cycle of Van Damme teaming up with Hong Kong directors to attempt to repeat the same success as HARD TARGET and do for the likes of Ringo Lam what that film did for John Woo. Director Tsui Hark makes sure to throw in some patented kung fu fight scenes complete with plenty of gunplay, knifeplay, and attempts at strangulation. Add to that a complete overboard use of dutch angles and requisite poor CGI to make one generic 90's action movie experience complete! Worth it just to see Van Damme side-kick a growling tiger in the face, even if it does seem more the work of VFX than choreography.