Product: Replicant [VHS] (2001)
Rating: 3.0
Average Action Film From Van Damme - Lam Collaboration
When you watch those action flicks by such Hong-Kong masters as Hark, Woo, and here, Ringo Lam, you just observe one golden rule. As Bruce Lee once said, "Don't think; just feel." Got it?So, apply that to Lam's latest film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, the action star whose cinematic status even now I cannot still fathom. This time, however, Van Damme exhibits his flair for hard-core action with not-so-terrible acting. You might feel dismayed to hear that he plays two roles -- one is a serial killer Garrotte who goes by the name of "Torch" because you know why -- and the other being a replicant made for the purpose of you know what. The story is admittedly not important; it is those action scenes that count, and "Replicant" provides them, to our surprise, in a fairly good form. I presume to think that you seldom watch a car not only blown up high into the air, but thrust into a flight of stairs in a burning building. But that kind of thing happens in Lam's films, one of which once happened to feature Van Damme (namely "Maximum Risk") in the past.The acting, if you ask me, is just slightly average, but frankly, I was not a little astonished to find that Van Damme can exude this amount of threatening menace of a creepy killer. Though sometimes his acting as the "Replicant" goes beyound our belief, there is no particular complaint about Van Damme's work. Besides, we get a precious aid from Michael Rooker, whose tough-guy image is always welcome when the storyline sags. Overall it's a (slightly) above average action film.Michael Rooker himself played a serial killer in a cult film "Henry," and then played a replicant again in "The Sixth Day." And now he is playing an ex-cop who chases the one with a help from the other!