Product: Replicant [VHS] (2001)
Rating: 2.0
He may act better, but it's too lean on the action front.
After the dissapointing team up of Van Damme and Ringo Lam on Maximum Risk, I must say I had my doubts about this film. And while it is better then Maximum Risk it is still a fairly flawed film.As other reviewers have mentioned Van Damme does do a good job of portraying these duel good and evil roles, and he does not over act them like he might of in the 80's. But here lies the problem of this whole film. All the acting is fairly understated and the pacing is dull and plodding, and it is neither scary nor funny nor action packed. It tries to be a bit of everything and fails on all fronts...not completly, but enough to make it unsatisfying.Now I don't know about you, but I think Michael Rooker is pretty dull. In Replicant I suppose he is fairly convincing as a hard-boiled cop, but he doesn't bring anything to the role that may have taken it to the next level. And speaking of Michael Rooker, one of the main reasons I got this DVD was for the Van Damme commentary, but alas he hardly speaks, when he does speak his english is alot worse then I thought it would be by now, but his excitement is very catchy. But bloody boring Michael Rooker talks alot, and it's almost always about himself and boy has he got an ego. By the end of the film he has resorted to talking about how much he works out and what a pity it was that he only got a short chance to show off his "muscled torso" breifly in a T-shirt in REPLICANT!!!!...Now Ringo Lam has proved that he knows how to do some crazy action (like the chinese outings BURNING PARADISE and FULL CONTACT for example), but he REALLY holds back on the goods in REPLICANT. There is basicly no solid action scenes untill the end fight, which I thought would rule, but VAN DAMMES skills are barely used and the chreography, shot composistion and editing is not even very good.To summarise REPLICANT is a dull, plodding and an unthrilling "thriller" with almost no decent action, unscary evil guy scenes and very underdeveloped sci/fi elements. However it is cool to see Van Damme extend himself acting wise.For die hard fans of Van Damme only, or people who thought Maximum Risk, Double Team, Universal Soilder:The Return and Streetfighter were "good" Van Damme films.