Double Team Reviews

The totally generic name doesn't give you a clue, so you probably want to know what this movie's about. Well, hard to say exactly, but it has something to do with scary amusement parks, Dennis Rodman selling high-tech weapons out of a sex shop in Antwerp, plutonium, Jean-Claude Van Damme's thighs, captive superspies on a tropical island, tigers and bald Chinese dervishes holding switchblades between their toes. The angles are canted, the close-ups are disorienting, the colors are supersaturated and the action never stops. Making a Van Damme picture appears to have become a rite of passage for Hong Kong directors looking to break into the American mainstream market -- Ringo Lam and John Woo have already weathered the Van Damme-age -- and Vietnamese-born producer/director Tsui Hark gives his U.S. debut a densely layered, nightmarish and utterly chaotic look that will be familiar to Hong Kong action buffs. Neophytes may be baffled by the film's weirdly sentimental streak -- the vendetta that drives antiterrorist Van Damme and his nemesis (Rourke) is all about babies -- but by the time Rourke has mined the Colosseum (yes, the Colosseum) and sicced a Bengal tiger on Van Damme, the wise viewer is just sitting back and enjoying the show.