Maximum Risk (1996)
In this one Van Damme runs afoul of the Russian mafia, and by Van Damme I really mean Van Dammes, as he once more plays twin brothers. It all starts when French cop Van Damme is summoned to a crime scene by one of his partners, where he discovers that his twin brother from Russia has been killed by the mob. He then follows the trail of evidence to New York City and goes undercover as his deceased bro. This includes shagging his girlfriend and only telling her the truth after. JCVD's search for the truth is complicated by a few corrupt FBI guys. This is an excellent stupid action movie. The opening car chase is super fun, and the combat is pretty neat and well-done. Even the production values are better than usual for a Van Damme film. He even has a decent sauna fight, years before Jackie Chan did it in Accidental Spy. That's the thing with Van Damme: very little of what he does really stands out. Van Damme's best stuff is merely solid when compared with virtuosos like Chan. Van Damme is never boring, but he's never that exciting, either. But if you dig the action genre, there's nothing safer than choosing a Van Damme film at random. You know what's going to happen, and he consistently delivers totally competent, short, inoffensive, and dumb movies. You can unwind to Van Damme. In that sense, Maximum Risk works.
Knock Off (1998)
This is my favorite Van Damme film. He plays a fashion designer who pals around with Rob Schneider in Hong Kong. They're both involved in counterfeiting apparel, leading to one of the weirdest pieces of product placement in cinema history: a subject point-of-view shot from inside a pair of fake "Pumma" shoes. It gets weirder. The CIA then blackmail our heroes into working with the agency to bring down the Russian mafia. You see, it turns out that the Russian mafia is using these counterfeit jeans or whatever to smuggle small bombs across the world. You would think there would be a better way, but not for these guys. For some reason, fashion designer/martial arts impresario Van Damme is virtually the only one the government trusts to stop these terrorists. Our national security rests with the big oaf. Van Damme is up to the challenge, however. I love this film. Sure, there's fewer martial arts in this one than in some of his other films, but watching the final rain-soaked shootout is like watching a ballet on the moon, complete with knee-slides. It doesn't make a lick of sense. I feel like I write this for most Van Damme films. Bless him.
Replicant (2001)
There's a whole subgenre of Van Damme films out there in which our favorite kickboxing poseur plays long-lost identical twins, or brothers, or past versions of himself, or clones of himself. This includes classic films like Double Impact, Timecop, Maximum Risk, and Replicant. In Replicant, definitely the best of the bunch, Van Damme plays both a serial killer and a clone created by the NSA from forensic evidence. It's assumed that the clone, fabricated from the serial killer's DNA, has some sort of psychic connection with the serial killer and can sense his presence or something. Goodness knows how exactly this happens, but it seems logical enough to the government. Since he's created in a lab, the clone is born with no prior experience and must learn how to walk, talk, interact and all that from scratch. In a fascinating montage, an adult Van Damme goes from crawling to doing his trademark splits in mere moments. Lots of conflicts follow: identities are mistaken, loyalties are questioned, sex is had, spin kicks are spun, you know. Van Damme gets plenty of philosophical mileage out of this whole "double" thing, and it culminates in a head-to-head fight between the original and the clone in a parking lot. This is the kind of action film I enjoy most; Replicant is both philosophically earnest and absolutely unafraid (or unaware) of its own stupidity. It's corny as all get-out, but it sure does try, and it's never boring. That's always nice.
