Continuing the tradition of successful Hong Kong directors going to Hollywood only to end up directing Jean-Claude Van Damme movies comes Tsui Hark with 'Double Team'. John Woo must have gotten lucky when he went to Hollywood: Ringo Lam is still making Van Damme movies, and Tsui Hark went back to Hong Kong after this and 'Knock Off'. I have nothing against Van Damme, but he seems to be some sort of trial-by-fire for any Hong Kong director with ambitions of making action films in Hollywood: If a director succeeds, he go on to Dolph Lundgren and then mainstream Hollywood action (John Woo), otherwise the director is faced with sticking with Van Damme movies or going back to Hong Kong.
Counter-terrorist Jack Quinn (Van Damme) is planning to retire after one final mission to nail the villainous Stavros (Mickey Rourke). The mission goes incredibly wrong: Stravos gets away, but somehow his son is killed in the cross-fire. Out for revenge, Stavros kidnaps the pregnant Kathryn Quinn (Natacha Lindinger), and the only way Jack can save is wife is team up with Yaz (Dennis Rodman) and kick-box his way to a happy ending.
Watching 'Double Team', I thought it was pretty clear than even Van Damme realizes that his movies are a joke to all but the most hardcore of action fans. Australian sketch comedy show 'Full Frontal' (featuring a not-so-famous Eric Bana) regularly took stabs at Van Damme for a good year or so ("YOU LAUGHTER CRACKIN' AT ME? ARRRGGGHHHHH!"), coincidentally around when 'Double Team' would have been released. At no point does 'Double Team' make any attempt to be taken as a serious action movie. All the fight scenes are played for laughs, if only slight chuckles. Van Damme gets to fight a tiger and use a coke-machine to shield himself from an explosion. All it really amounts to be is 90 minutes of action fun.
While fans of director Tsui Hark would be disappointed with this effort, something good came of Hark's short-lived collaborations with Van Damme: He went back to Hong Kong and directed the incredibly awesome 'Time and Tide' (which did not feature Jean-Claude Van Damme at all).
'Double Team' doesn't come to close to being one of Van Damme's best, and it might not even please hard-core Van Damme fans, but its all in good fun - 5/10
