Review of Double Team (1997) by Nick B — 01 Sep 2015

Teaming up action legend Jean-Claude Van Damme with Dennis Rodman, Double Team sounded like a film with action potential and dreadful acting.

The intro scene in Double Team doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. There is minimal clarification to anything that is going on and then in the blink of an eye there are senseless car crashes and explosions happening. After that, I just stopped caring about the story because it isn't why I came to watch Double Team. I came for cheap action thrills and unintentional comedy stemming from Dennis Rodman's rendition of acting. Yet the story just kept pushing it because all the ridiculous twists and turns interspersed with action film conventions made the film both predictable and confusing. From a narrative perspective, Double Team has no grip on what it is doing. It turns from a conventional action film into a James Bond parody with unappealing technology and a story beyond ridiculous for a film featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman. The fact that Tsui Hark had the ambition to create something beyond the average Jean-Claude Van Damme action piece is worthy of praise, but his intentions play second fiddle to the execution of the film. The ridiculous story in the film dissolves into a series of over the top action scenes and commercialized gimmicks that get more and more ridiculous by the minute. The thing about Tsui Hark is that he has never heard of the top, and so he goes over it again and again. Because of that there are some fun moments in Double Team thanks to the action choreography with some decent fighting scenes including one where Jean-Claude Van Damme battles a Tiger with his bare hands, but that is clearly not a credible source of entertainment value. That should explain how ridiculously excessive Double Team is, and the artificiality of the special effects in the scene leave viewers confronting it on a ridiculous level. This is one example of a point in the film where the experience is actually funny, but it is for all the wrong purposes.

If the action scenes in Double Team are ever truly successful, it is strictly on the basis of their over the to nature fitting the incompetent nature of the story so effectively that it is unintentionally hilarious. So in essence, Double Team is an effective action comedy on some level. It's just not the right level. The film is funny for its unintentional comedic elements in the face of a story which takes itself way too seriously. One major notable factor is that the Coca Cola product placement in Double Team is just ridiculous. It practically serves as the epitome of precisely how commercial Double Team is. It would help to explain where the financing came from because I can't imagine a production team willing to actually green-light a script like Double Team. Still, there was one and so it's just something to put up with. If you sit back and embrace the over the top visual style and ridiculous nature of the action scenes then perhaps there is sporadic value for you to find in Double Team. All others need not apply. And with Double Team being so overtly style focused without a whiff of substance, the cast easily falter.

Jean-Claude Van Damme's performance capitalizes on his status as an action hero, but his acting is nothing to boast about. He isn't a great actor, but in Double Team he isn't even a good one because he is unable to settle on any consistency with his tone of voice. Like a boy having his voice break, Jean-Claude Van Damme manages to keep on hitting different tones throughout the film but always come off as being distant from the character, ensuring that there is no charismatic spirit in him. His character is a poorly written one anyway, but Jean-Claude Van Damme practically ensures that he has no hope of being anything more. But when it comes to the action scenes, he still had no trouble dealing justice with his kicks, punches and trigger-happy energy.

Dennis Rodman goes for the same angle that Wesley Snipes followed in portraying the role of Simon Phoenix in Demolition Man. The prime difference between them however is that Wesley Snipes is an actor and Dennis Rodman is not. If Shaquille O'Neal taught us anything about acting, it would be that transitioning to such ambitions from a high profile basketball career is not an easy move. And when you're decked out in flamboyantly esoteric clothing, it does nothing for you. The quality of Dennis Rodman's performance does succeed as being laughably poor which means that as a matter of fact he actually succeeded at delivering what I expected from him, but it still could have been more fun. Dennis Rodman would do a better job if he went along the lines of Chris Tucker's performance as Ruby Rhod in The Fifth Element which was released the following month. By coincidence, Dennis Rodman snagged the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst New Star from Chris Tucker for that role. Either way, Dennis Rodman does Wesley Snipes poorly. I can't say it wasn't expected at all, but I didn't think that he would put a restrained effort in when the manic energy of the film really demands that he go over the top. He fails to do that, and no amount of ridiculous coloured clothing in the world can mask that, so he fails to really make an impact in a good way or a good-bad way.

Even Mickey Rourke does nothing in his part as a villain. The role clearly demands nothing from him and requires minimal screen time, and so as a result there is little left for him to do but deliver his lines without any tone of voice beyond a single deep one. Mickey Rourke has no gimmick being in Double Team, and so the unsatisfactory result of his presence is unsurprising.

So although Double Team boasts the fighting skills of Jean-Claude Van Damme, an overly convoluted plot and Tsui Hark's insistence on taking it seriously makes it difficult to embrace as a guilty pleasure when there is not enough action to hide it all.