Film

Double Team (1997)

Director: Tsui Hark

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

More than just another action director, Tsui Hark is one of world cinema's great fantasists, with The Butterfly Murders and Once Upon a Time in China among his many credits. But this is rubbish: an incoherent James Bond-ish yarn distinguished only by its formal decadence and the presence of basketball's Dennis Rodman. He looks like a punk, but has a disarmingly fey, debonair manner which gives his scenes a fillip. In contrast, Van Damme is puny and square as a CIA operative press-ganged into The Colony, a secret think-tank for 'retired' international agents. After that, the film-makers can't think of anything more interesting for him to do than the rescue of wife and new-born child from the clutches of villain Stavros (Rourke). Directing on autopilot-gone-haywire, Tsui rips off that old HK gag of the shoot-out in a baby ward, throws in a tiger for the gladiatorial climax, and blows up the Coliseum as an afterthought.

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