by Paul Pruitt
Staff Writer
Double Team
** (out of **** stars)
"It was intense. I was pretty sore after that. But once I got into it I loved it, even though I was too sore to do it."
- Dennis Rodman on working on his feature-film debut, Double Team.
Imagine you are Jean-Claude Van Damme, secret agent, fighting the evil Mickey Rourke with fists, feet and firearms. You are in a hospital nursery with dozens of crying babies as you kick, shoot and jump all over your enemy.
Suddenly, you foe disappears, and then from the next room comes a baby carriage hurtling right towards you. You can handle the baby carriage, but can you handle the grenade next to the baby?
This is what the new film Double Team is all about: action, death and insanity.
The film stars action-adventure god Van Damme (Lionheart, Double Impact, TimeCop) as CIA "special agent" Jack Quinn, who is brought out of retirement to battle the sinister bad guy Stavros, played by Rourke (The Pope of Greenwich Village, The Year of the Dragon, Angel Heart).
Van Damme's partner in justice is the hairdresser/victim/arms dealer Yaz, played by the Chicago Bulls' one and only Dennis Rodman. Although he doesn't kick any photographers in the groin during the film, Rodman does help Van Damme out with some serious on-screen butt-kicking.
Quinn is brought out of retirement because "he is the only one who knows how [enter any bad guy's name here] thinks." And hence, he is the only one who can stop him.
This plot has been used in more films than it should have (one was actually already too many), and because of this, the viewer knows what will happen at every turn.
I usually deem a film worthless unless there is another aspect good enough to balance out the dreaded predictability. I am happy to say that this movie has such an element in its martial-arts sequences.
It has been quite some time since a film has exhibited the volume and intensity of the martial-arts battles presented here. The scenes were handled amazingly well.
The highlight comes in one of the final battle scenes, and involves our heroes, the villains, a bloodthirsty tiger, land mines, a motorcycle, metal crosses (?) and plenty of firearms. It all came together perfectly, and the brilliance of the scene was amazing in an otherwise half-decent movie.
Unfortunately, the film's other aspects are forgettable, at best. The corny one-liners Rodman uses relating to basketball were funny only because they were so pathetic.
The film was obviously originally written without the Rodman character. Hong Kong director Tsui Hark must have had the brilliant idea to put him in as an afterthought.
The remainder of Double Team's action sequences are also quite tired and overused, including an episode where Van Damme is being chased by a group of evildoers near a railroad track. As he approaches the tracks, and an oncoming train, Van Damme effortlessly makes it over the train, narrowly escaping the bad guys. How many times have you seen that in an action film?
Another overused plot twist that pops up is that Quinn's feeble, loving wife Katherine (played by French actress Natacha Lindinger), gets - you guessed it - kidnapped. If I see another movie with this tired rehash, I am going to call up Hollywood and file a formal complaint with somebody. We as moviegoerss, deserve more than this crap. If filmmakers are having such a hard time coming up with original ideas, I'm sure my 5-year-old daughter could help them out.
On a lighter note, the setting of Rome gives the chases and brutality a nice sugar coating, as opposed to the usual ghetto scenes of New York, for example.
It's too bad that Dennis got so sore while he was doing it, but hey, he loved it.