This is one of those movies where I saw the trailer so many times as a teen that the Jean-Claude Van Damme wisecrack to Dennis Rodman, “Who does your hair, Siegfried or Roy?”, was forever burned on my brain. I remember one night out with friends grabbing a kebab after midnight and watching the climax of Double Team (1997) on the restaurant TV, which seemed a perfect way to watch it (the climax felt like a kebab with the lot, double meat). I was in the mood to experience the whole thing from one side of the court to the other (my attempt to join in on the movie’s non-stop basketball puns, which only make meta-textual sense with Rodman’s casting – his arms dealer character is never stated to have played or been involved in basketball). Double Team is Hong Kong action movie legend Tsui Hark’s first English language film as a director and there is considerable poetic style in the close-ups, dissolves and transitions (that fight in the maternity ward) as well as hyper-kinetic shoot-outs and martial arts fights (the guy holding the knife with his foot has to be the best martial arts sequence – Sammo Hung even helped out with the martials arts choreography). Of course, this is a late nineties JCVD action flick with basketball “bad boy” Dennis Rodman stunt-casted into a buddy flick, so it’s also completely ridiculous and breathlessly paced as it keeps throwing things at the screen without any strong narrative thread: Mickey Rourke is the mumbly, muscular terrorist out for revenge over the death of his wife and child in a CIA shoot out (which JCVD never comments on or feels bad about), there’s an island of retired “classified as dead” secret agents called The Colony (which feels styled after The Prisoner TV show) presided over by a classy Paul Freeman (Belloq from Raiders of the Lost Ark), and Rodman as an arms dealer who continually helps JCVD beyond the point of any good reason. At his best, JCVD brings an intense energy to his movies and in this, he flexes his leg muscles in some very memorable ways (a training montage with him screaming at the camera is always a good thing in my book). Rodman can’t act but he brings something interesting and strange to what is already a 90 minute descent into hectic Euro-flavoured action movie weirdness. I lost it when a parachute turned into the shape of a basketball. This film was entertaining, fun and silly (but good silly) and it’s all wrapped up in a tight 90 minute run time (take that, you Fast And The Furious franchise epics!). Rented on iTunes. If you’re a JCVD fan, recommended.
VHS Tracking 