# Knock Off (1998)

### reviewed by
Michael Dequina

    _Knock_Off_ (R) * (out of ****)

Renowned Hong Kong action director Tsui Hark first teamed with Jean-Claude Van Damme on the action star's 1997 pairing with Dennis Rodman, _Double_Team_, and managed to make what initially appeared to be a disaster into a slick, stylish, and somewhat diverting action timekiller. Tsui continues to energetically pile on the visual razzle dazzle in his latest collaboration with the Muscles from Brussels, _Knock_Off_, but this time around, style neither save a script that is at best ridiculous, and at worst incomprehensible; nor hide a host of truly lousy performances.

Writer Steven E. DeSouza's fairly straightforward plotline isn't as outre as _Double_Team_'s strange yarn involving a secret think tank/prison, but it makes about as much sense, which is little. Van Damme plays Marcus Ray, a Hong Kong-based sales rep for a jeans company (!) who stumbles upon a Russian terrorist scheme to implant powerful microchip-sized bombs in HK product exports to the U.S.--dolls, electronic equipment, and, yes, jeans. It's all part of some type of ransom scheme, but all I remember is--and I kid you not--graphics on a CIA computer screen showing a map of the world, bombs detonating, and an hat-wearing figure on the other side of the world bursting out into laughter...

...which is what the crowd at the showing I attended spontaneously did throughout _Knock_Off_. While all of Van Damme's films have its share of unintentional laughs, mostly due to the stiff acting "skills" of the physically agile Van Damme, _Knock_Off_ delivers more than usual (though not as many as Van Damme's embarrassing directorial effort, 1996's _The_Quest_). A lot of the laughs are earned by some particularly painful lines by DeSouza: "I smoked that badass like a Roman candle!" and "Entrepreneurship, babycakes!" standing out among my favorites. But it is indeed the pathetic performances that provide the bulk of _Knock_Off_'s laughs. Van Damme is true to laughable form, perhaps even worse than usual. Early scenes actually _require_ him to make funny with co-star Rob Schneider (improbably cast as a deep cover CIA agent posing as Marcus's business partner), and the sight and sound of the still-heavily-accented Van Damme haplessly trying to drop punchlines is hilarious in the wrong way. Even typically good actors are not immune to the bad acting bug. Paul Sorvino is unconvincing and terribly overwrought as Schneider's CIA superior; and Lela Rochon, playing an investigator for the jeans company, spends the entire movie in perpetual snarl mode. In Rochon's defense, though, her role requires her to do little more than display her toned legs, exquisite bone structure, and perky bosoms, the latter coming in handy for one key scene where she must fish for microbombs stuck in her ample cleavage.

Tsui picks up where he left off visually in _Double_Team_, juicing up the proceedings with inventive camera work. Here, though, Tsui's visual razzle dazzle borders on over kill, coming off as desperate attempts to shield the inanity of the entire enterprise. For each nifty trick Tsui pulls off, such as a recurring visual theme that has the camera literally going through the circuitry of electronic devices, there are others that are completely superfluous. This is especially disconcerting when the trick in question could be clever when used in the right context. For instance, one scene early on has Marcus putting his hand in a box. As he puts his hand in, the same action is shown from an overhead camera angle in a rectangle at the corner of the screen. It's undoubtedly an interesting visual, but it would have been nice if its use actually amounted to something.

The test of a Van Damme movie boils down to the action sequences, but surprisingly, those in _Knock_Off_ leave much to be desired. Tsui does what he can to make something of them, employing freeze frames, blurred motion, and unconventional camera angles, but there is nothing fundamentally special about the fairly generic chase and fight sequences written by DeSouza. There isn't anything as preposterously amusing as the climactic tiger/land mine fight in _Double_Team_, let alone anything remotely close to Tsui's legendary Hong Kong works (but that's a given going in).

If Tsui has any hope of approaching his countryman John Woo's stateside success, he would do best to break free from Van Damme... before it's too late. If he continues his involvement with B-grade movies such as _Knock_Off_, the respect he has from HK action fans will continue to diminish... that is, if it hasn't already disappeared entirely after this fiasco.

Michael Dequina mrbrown@ucla.edu | michael_jordan@geocities.com Mr. Brown's Movie Site: http://welcome.to/mrbrown CompuServe Hollywood Hotline: http://www.HollywoodHotline.com

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