ripe with explosions , mass death and really weird hairdos , tsui hark 's " double team " must be the result of a tipsy hollywood power lunch that decided jean - claude van damme needs another notch on his bad movie - bedpost and nba superstar dennis rodman should have an acting career .
actually , in " double team , " neither 's performance is all that bad .
i 've always been the one critic to defend van damme -- he possesses a high charisma level that some genre stars ( namely steven seagal ) never aim for ; it 's just that he 's never made a movie so exuberantly witty since 1994 's " timecop .
" and rodman . . .
well , he 's pretty much rodman .
he 's extremely colorful , and therefore he pretty much fits his role to a t , even if the role is that of an ex - cia weapons expert .
it 's the story that needs some major work .
van damme plays counter - terrorist operative jack quinn , who teams up with arms dealer yaz ( rodman ) to rub out deadly gangster stavros ( mickey rourke , all beefy and weird - looking ) in an antwerp amusement park .
the job is botched when stavros ' son gets killed in the gunfire , and quinn is taken off to an island known as " the colony " -- a think tank for soldiers " too valuable to kill " but " too dangerous to set free .
" quinn escapes and tries to make it back home to his pregnant wife ( natacha lindinger ) , but stavros is out for revenge and kidnaps her .
so , what 's a kickboxing mercenary to do ?
quinn looks up yaz and the two travel to rome so they can rescue the woman , kill stavros , save the world and do whatever else the screenplay requires them to do .
with crazy , often eye - popping camera work by peter pau and rodman 's lite brite locks , " double team " should be a mildly enjoyable guilty pleasure .
but too much tries to happen in each frame , and the result is a movie that leaves you exhausted rather than exhilarated .
the numerous action scenes are loud and headache - inducing and the frenetic pacing never slows down enough for us to care about what 's going on in the movie .
and much of what 's going on is just wacky .
there 's a whole segment devoted to net - surfing monks
that i have yet to figure out
.
and the climax finds quinn going head - to - head with a tiger in the roman coliseum while yaz circles them on a motorcycle , trying to avoid running over land mines and hold on to quinn 's baby boy ( who 's in a bomb equipped basket ) -- all this while stavros watches shirtless from the bleachers .
did i mention " double team " is strange ?
when it all comes down , this is just another rarely entertaining formula killathon , albeit one that feels no need to indulge in gratuitous profanity .
rodman juices things up with his blatantly vibrant screen persona , though , leading up to a stunt where he kicks an opponent between the legs .
but we did n't need " double team " to tell us he could do that , did we ?
the result of a tipsy hollywood power lunch another rarely entertaining formula killathon loud and headache - inducing and the frenetic pacing never slows down enough for us to care about what 's going on in the movie that i have yet to figure out ripe with explosions , mass death and really weird hairdos too much tries to happen in each frame , and the result is a movie that leaves you exhausted it 's the story that needs some major work