Saturday, June 20, 2015

Movie review - "Double Impact" (1991) ***

The quality of Jean Claude Van Damme's films continued to rise in the early 90s... this is one of his strongest, helped in part by the central idea taken from The Corsican Brothers: identical twins are separated at birth when triads assassinate his parents (an excellent opening sequence); one grows up a flashy pink short-wearing yoga/karate instructor in LA, the other is a tough smuggler with a code of honor in Hong Kong. Eventually they meet up and track down the people responsible for their parent's death.

That's a solid basis for an action film and Jean Claude succeeds (helped by some skillful cutting and effects) in making the two different characters. You can't help wishing they'd used the central idea more - made the two really different (eg the flashy one could have known nothing about fighting but learned along the way), had a strong love triangle instead of a fake one (the tough one gets jealous of the flashy one and the tough ones girl but it's only paranoia... why not have them both genuinely fall for the one girl?), used the "opposites" of the lead for more comedy.

It was also disappointing that Geoffrey Lewis' character never became that integral (I kept expecting him to die, or one of them to be angry at him, or something), the female lead was so under-developed, couldn't there have been one positive Asian character, and the running time went on too long. I felt say an Arnie movie would have fixed these problems, which is why he became a bigger star.

Still, be grateful for what you've got: pleasing location work in Hong Kong, some imaginative action sequences (eg a fight in a blue lit room with a baddie using a dagger in his boot), Bolo Yeung as a baddie, Cory Everson as a female assassin, Jean Claude in fine form.

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