KNOCK OFF (M). (Tristar/Village Roadshow) Director: Tsui Hark Stars: Jean Claude Van Damme, Rob Schneider, Lela Rochon, Paul Sorvino Running time: 90 minutes.
Like the recent Chinese Box, most of the action in Knock Off takes place against the background of the hand-over of Hong Kong to China after a century of British rule. However, the lack of immediacy here doesn't seem to matter too much with this tired, unconvincing and rudimentary plot. Rather than a poignant love story set against a backdrop of the clash between cultures, Knock Offis a mindless and unconvincing B-grade spy thriller that offers fading action star Jean Claude Van Damme one final opportunity to salvage his career from the scrap heap.
Van Damme's status as an action hero reached its pinnacle with Time Copand the Die Hardclone Sudden Death. Since then it's been largely downhill, with a series of increasingly dull, mindless and gratuitously violent action films. The muscles from Brussels has placed his career in the hands of a number of influential Hong Kong action directors (John Woo, Ringo Lam, and Tsui Hark, but they have been unable to reverse his declining box office fortunes.
In Knock Off, Van Damme plays Marcus Ray, an exporter and wholesaler for an American jeans company, based in Hong Kong. He and his partner Tommy (Rob Schneider, from Judge Dredd, etc) accidentally find themselves mixed up in a terrorist scheme to smuggle small but very lethal bombs into the US. Sinister forces are planting the bombs, which burst into green flame, inside toys, clothes and other consumer goods and shipping them to America. Ray finds himself up against the CIA, the Triads and the Hong Kong police as he tries to unravel the complicated international plot.
This below par effort has been written by Steven E De Souza, who has previously written some of Hollywood's best action thrillers of the past decade - Die Hard, and Die Hard 2, etc. There's plenty of action scenes, but the film is undermined by Tsui Hark's cold, clinical choreography and visual flourishes. Hark, who previously directed our hero in the ludicrous Double Team, brings his own distinctive style to the film. He uses close-ups, a constantly moving camera, and lots of unusual angles to bring an illusion of kinetic energy to the material. Unfortunately, his unnecessarily flamboyant visual style somehow removes any genuine sense of excitement and suspense.
Van Damme's performance is more wooden and unconvincing than ever, and he seems uncomfortable with the more comic elements of the script. Even Schneider's desperate attempts to breathe some humour into proceedings with a series of throw away one liners fall flat.
Knock Offis a disappointing and muddled actioner that marks a new low in Van Damme's declining career. At this rate, Van Damme will join the ranks of those other faded action stars whose films now regularly disappear straight on to video (Dolph Lundgren, Rutger Hauer, etc).
* ©Greg King March 1999 Melbourne Australia greg king http://www.netau.com.au/gregking
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