Double Team (1997) User Reviews

Van Damme v. a Tiger!

[AwesomeWolf · 5/10 · 1 June 2005]

Continuing the tradition of successful Hong Kong directors going to Hollywood only to end up directing Jean-Claude Van Damme movies comes Tsui Hark with 'Double Team'. John Woo must have gotten lucky when he went to Hollywood: Ringo Lam is still making Van Damme movies, and Tsui Hark went back to Hong Kong after this and 'Knock Off'. I have nothing against Van Damme, but he seems to be some sort of trial-by-fire for any Hong Kong director with ambitions of making action films in Hollywood: If a director succeeds, he go on to Dolph Lundgren and then mainstream Hollywood action (John Woo), otherwise the director is faced with sticking with Van Damme movies or going back to Hong Kong.

Counter-terrorist Jack Quinn (Van Damme) is planning to retire after one final mission to nail the villainous Stavros (Mickey Rourke). The mission goes incredibly wrong: Stravos gets away, but somehow his son is killed in the cross-fire. Out for revenge, Stavros kidnaps the pregnant Kathryn Quinn (Natacha Lindinger), and the only way Jack can save is wife is team up with Yaz (Dennis Rodman) and kick-box his way to a happy ending.

Watching 'Double Team', I thought it was pretty clear than even Van Damme realizes that his movies are a joke to all but the most hardcore of action fans. Australian sketch comedy show 'Full Frontal' (featuring a not-so-famous Eric Bana) regularly took stabs at Van Damme for a good year or so ("YOU LAUGHTER CRACKIN' AT ME? ARRRGGGHHHHH!"), coincidentally around when 'Double Team' would have been released. At no point does 'Double Team' make any attempt to be taken as a serious action movie. All the fight scenes are played for laughs, if only slight chuckles. Van Damme gets to fight a tiger and use a coke-machine to shield himself from an explosion. All it really amounts to be is 90 minutes of action fun.

While fans of director Tsui Hark would be disappointed with this effort, something good came of Hark's short-lived collaborations with Van Damme: He went back to Hong Kong and directed the incredibly awesome 'Time and Tide' (which did not feature Jean-Claude Van Damme at all).

'Double Team' doesn't come to close to being one of Van Damme's best, and it might not even please hard-core Van Damme fans, but its all in good fun - 5/10

Entertainingly overblown action marred by slapdash storytelling

[ipkevin · 11 January 2000]

The script for Double Team was originally called "The Colony" and by several accounts, it was actually quite good. Apparently, it went through many major alterations on its way to production until the final product bore little resemblance in tone and quality to the original script. Does this mean Double Team is a disaster? Not really, but its clear all the changes created some problems.

On the one hand, you have the participation of famed Hong Kong director Tsui Hark and world-class cinematographer Peter Pau. They manage to create some of the coolest, trippiest, most fantastical visuals this side of a MTV video and better still, do so without the excessively choppy editing that usually accompanies "MTV-style" films. You actually get to appreciate the luxuriously-shot images, though the film is by no means slow-paced. Better still, it's one of the few Van Damme movies that realizes the best Van Damme movies are the ones which absolutely never rely on Van Damme's acting (or anyone else's for that matter) to carry the film along. It's all action, goofily entertaining plot twists, and sweet visuals. As an action-packed, overblown, eye-candy fantasy, Double Team works very well.

On the other hand, it's painfully obvious that Double Team used to have a smarter script which called for a far more subtle and serious approach. Had these "intelligent" elements been completely erased or dumbed-down for the final product, this wouldn't have been a problem. However, it seems that some of the more subtle plot developments were left in and they do NOT mesh well with Tsui's and the rest of the final script's "jackhammer" approach to the story. For example, at one point a prescription label left on the wall is supposed to be noticed by Van Damme's character who then uses the name of the doctor on the label as a clue. However, unless you're paying very very close attention you'd never know that. It's so small on screen, the label may as well have been blank. And the shot where the label is taken off the prescription bottle is far too quick and unclear. A single extra shot showing a closeup of the label would've cleared things up immensely. But it never happens. The film contains several instances like this where a single clarifying shot or an extra line of explanatory dialogue would've made things much clearer. The result is that what seem like glaring plot holes (even for this kind of movie) are in fact due to badly explained plot points. Such an obscure presentation might have worked on a quieter, more "intelligent" spy film where the audience knows they aren't going to be spoon-fed the plot. But after 40 minutes of terrible one-liners and ridiculous action, the last thing that should be required of Double Team's audience is to suddenly pay close attention to what's happening.

I don't know whether Tsui Hark was trying to keep in some subtle elements while reconciling it with the rapid-fire approach, or whether he just didn't care about such details and wanted to keep things moving (Probably the latter, as his subsequent movie, Knock Off, experimented with this abstract, to-hell-with-storytelling visual approach to the nth degree). Whatever the case, the result is a pretty wild but somewhat confusing action movie that could've been much better with minor changes.

Silliness

[NateWatchesCoolMovies · 5/10 · 15 August 2016]

Double Team has to be seen to be believed. Hell, even the poster does. It exists in that delirious wasteland of the late 90's action genre, a place where anything can, and does go. As the genre evolved, the scientists deep within Hollywood's labs were trying out endless mind boggling action star team ups, even using a few celebrities that had never had a film to their name. In this particular twilight zone we get Jean Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman sharing a spotlight. There's a pairing for ya. Van Damme plays a counter terrorist expert who miserably fails in preventing an attack from dangerous villain Stavros (Mickey Rourke), and is sent to The Colony, where disgraced agents are branded with all the snazzy technology the 90's had to offer, after which being sent back into duty. He needs inside helps to track down Stavros, and finds it in beyond eccentric arms dealer Yaz (Rodman), a whacko who mirrors the man's overblown real life persona. Together they make a run at Rourke, fireworks ensue, blah blah. It's a crappy flick made noticeable by the strange presence of Rodman, and marginally watchable by Rourke, who actually gives Stavros the tiniest glint of surprising gravity, despite how downright silly the whole enterprise is. Loaded with cheese, dated special effects and clichés, it ain't no picnic, but worth a glance during an inebriated late night channel switching blitz.

Good action, but no logic.

[Nafiganado · 4/10 · 12 January 2006]

Movie itself it quite catchy - the fight of Jack with Asian man in the hotel room was the best, imho...

But some things are under critics. Like exploding on the arena - when eventually whole the building is got blown away - what 'bad guy' of Mickey Rourke was thinking about when placing mines of such explosive power there? :) Or what was on 'good guy' of Dennis Rodman's mind when swapping some mine marks? To play the game 'who dies first - good Jack or bad Stavros? A big number of gotchas that may be forgiven only because it's just an action. Plain action with good fights and explosions...

Good action, but with some big plot-holes.

[action-6 · 7/10 · 19 March 1999]

Double Team is the third movie that Van Damme has done for a former HONG-KONG action-movie director. He has done "Hard Target" for John Woo and "Maximum Risk" for Ringo Lam. Double Team is directed by rather splendid Tsui Hark. Hark is excellent at directing action-scenes and Double Team is a good way for him to start in Hollywood. Van Damme plays agent Jack Quinn, and is sent out to kill super-terrorist Stavros, who is played by Mickey Rourke. Quinn fails and is therefore sent sent to a place called "The Colony". "The Colony" is a place where the world's most dangerous terrorists/agents are sent. These agents/terrorists are too dangerous to go free on the street and too valuable to kill. Quinn escapes from the colony and goes after Stavroes for revenge. Quinn is helped by Yaz, who is played by the basket-star Dennis Rodmann. Double Team is full of well made action and martial-art scenes. However, it`s far from perfect. The whole plot is very silly, there are huge logical gaps and holes in the story and Mickey Rourke is far from convincing as a villain. Double Team isn`t a film for everybody. But it`s definetly worth to rent it for an action-fan. I give this movie 7 out of 10.

Please Reclassify as a Comedy

[view_and_review · 3/10 · 10 October 2020]

Action movies have never been guilty of having intelligent plots and Van Damme movies are even further removed from such an accusation, yet "Double Team" took the cake when it comes to unintelligence. It was so bad it was hard to follow.

This is what I can say: Jack Quinn (JCVD) was a CIA super spy who'd been retired for three years when he was summoned by the agency to capture a man named Stavros (Mickey Rourke), a super-villain. Stavros had some information the agency wanted, hence they wanted to take him alive. For some odd reason Quinn's team thought their best opportunity to do that was at a carnival full of innocent civilians. Naturally, the whole thing went bad, Stavros got away, a bunch of people were killed in the process (including Stavros's six-year-old son), and Quinn ended up in "The Colony."

This colony is an island where all deactivated agents presumed dead are housed. They cannot leave and they're constantly monitored. There they are plugged into an intelligence network where they analyze world events to see if they are terrorism related or not. It's a real bizarre set up. The world needs them, but they are under constant threat of death should they not be where they're supposed to be at the appointed time.

The movie only got worse instead of better when Quinn escaped from The Colony. You see, Stavros did something really original: he kidnapped Quinn's pregnant wife. Kidnapping women/girls was very in style in the 90's. Every good villain did it, that's how you got the good guy to do what you wanted. Of course, it never worked out for the villain, but they always did it (see "Cliffhanger," "Hard Target," "True Lies," "Speed," and a host of other lower budget action movies).

Let me not forget that the movie is called "Double Team" which means there had to be a second good guy. That would be Yaz (Dennis Rodman). He was an arms dealer who decided to help Quinn rescue his wife. Yaz was there for terrible comic relief which involved a litany of bad basketball puns and analogies. This movie was destined to not age well, but at that time Dennis Rodman was a big deal. He was part of a three-headed monster of the Chicago Bulls which included Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippin. Together the three won three consecutive NBA championships. And besides that, Rodman was very notorious for his blond hair, plethora of tattoos, piercings, and dressing in a wedding gown. He was ahead of his time LOL!

It's hard to quantify how bad this pairing was. JCVD has a thick accent and no acting skills while Dennis Rodman was an eccentric basketball player with even less acting skills. This movie was bad in '97 though I watched it just for the spectacle of it. Now in 2020 it should be classified as comedy and treated as such.

Van Damme +Tsui Hark +Dennis Rodman=What ?? Really??

[fabiane66 · 7/10 · 7 September 2009]

Look before i start my review lets be honest about this movie, the movie is dumb and really does not make sense really a movie with Van Damme and Dennis Rodman really what do you expect. But lets also be clear this movie could be a lot of fun viewed in the right light and could almost be considered a really fun piece of garbage. Van Damme starts as a agent who is after Mickey Rourke (really Mickey really) while after Mickey, Mickey wife and child gets killed and now Mickey is really bad and spends the whole film trying to kill Van Damme. Van Damme needs help and so he enlist the help of Dennis Rodman(what did the Chicago Bulls cut him from the roster) who is a gun dealer. Well that is all the plot you really need, I mean what i just described could be action gold, not really i mean there is a lot of plot holes and a lot of scenes that just don't make sense. And now i come to the great director Tsui Hark ( i know if you just seen this film and his other movie starting Van Damme Knock Off you could be asking yourself "great director my ---") the director who gave us Once upon a time in china 1,2,3,4,5 and Pecking Opera Blues and other great hong kong movies. But this movie is not even in the same area code to these great movies but he does direct the film for all he's worth and does keep the movie flowing at a great pace and does give us a lot of action and Tsui at least make Van Damme look good as he enlist the great Sammo Hung to do the fights(lets be clear that the stuntman does most of the action for Van Damme) and Tsui Hark even got the great Peter Pau to shoot the film. Yes Peter Pau who went on to win a Oscar a couple years later for shooting Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In the end all i could say is that you could find worse movies starting Van Damme (there is too many to count) and you could find better like Hard Target,Timecop,or maybe Sudden Death. Double Team get a C+. So there Thank You.

Time has not been kind.

[J_steele1981 · 2/10 · 23 December 2022]

All I can say is wow. Saw this in the cinema in 1997 and thought it was brilliant. Watched it again in 2022 and wanted to grab a knife from the kitchen draw and just end it. This is horrible. This has not held up as time has passed. I know these sorts of action movies from the nineties were over the top, but this was excruciatingly painful. Mickey Rourke seemed like the only actor in this that felt like he needed to put in the effort. The whole storyline of the colony made no f$%king sense. Why? Why? No I'm thinking about it, why grab a knife, I should just look for some rope and tie it around the banister and then wrap it around my neck. Thankyou to the crew, actors, writers and director, you just drove a person to end their life with this so called movie.

Most people will dismiss this as junk. I, on the other hand...

[BA_Harrison · 8/10 · 22 September 2012]

A logic-free action flick that stretches plausibility way beyond breaking point, Double Team stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as counter-terrorist expert Jack Quinn who, after a botched mission to kill international terrorist Stavros (Mickey Rourke), becomes an unwilling participant in a top secret think-tank on a remote island colony for agents that are considered 'too valuable to kill, but too dangerous to set free'.

When Stavros (Mickey Rourke) abducts Jack's pregnant wife, having vowed revenge for the accidental death of his son during the earlier shootout, Jack escapes the colony, seeks help from an S&M freak gun dealer named Yaz (played by eccentric basketball bad-boy Dennis Rodman), and embarks on a dangerous rescue mission that culminates in an explosive showdown inside a coliseum.

Opening with Quinn escaping from some bad guys by jumping a heavily armoured stolen vehicle through a speeding train (without the aid of a ramp), this film is completely crazy from the get go, and Hong Kong director Tsui Hark doesn't let the insanity subside until the very end, chucking in such spectacular nonsense as Van Damme kicking the crap out of bad guys while hanging from an air-plane cargo net, a Chinese killer who uses his knife with his foot, a top secret society of cyber-monks, and a finale that sees the good guys fight a tiger in the middle of a mine field before escaping certain death from fireball through the use of a Coke vending machine.

Special mention must also be made of the incredible amount of glass that gets smashed during the film (usually because someone has been thrown through it).

Although I'll never quite understand how this film got green-lit, I'm sure glad it did: a more enjoyably insane piece of 90s nonsense you'll be hard pushed to find.

Call me crazy, but I rate Double Team 8 out of 10 simply for being so bloody silly.

Good for what it is

[werd75 · 6/10 · 22 February 2002]

A lot of people seem to forget that Van Damme isn't trying to make a really great movie. He doesn't usually care about the plot or the acting. He wants to make an action movie. That is the only reason I ever watch his movies and he never fails to deliver, including in this movie. Sure you cringe at the corny acting and dialogue when it happens, but the action sequences totally make up for it. I also enjoy when a movie doesn't take place in the US or Canada. I'm just bored with that. In this movie they go to Antwerp and Rome. Very cool settings for the movie. Over all I was quite pleased. The director, Tsui Hark (I have NO idea how you pronounce that), is always quite reliable in making a good action movie. It was just a good action movie, people. Don't look at it for more than what it was.

Van Damme van damages his career

[ejn1972 · 3/10 · 3 August 2002]

Okay, martial arts fans aside, Jean-Claude Van Damme may never be considered a great actor. It's little wonder. This movie's stunts range from improbable (an underwater battle in which our "hero" goes without oxygen for several minutes - and remember that he's *fighting* for much of that time) to downright laughable (a grenade that goes off in a pool creates a 50-foot fireball). It co-stars Dennis Rodman - you remember back when he was cool, right? - as a wisecracking arms dealer. His role is mainly that of a comic sidekick, though I'm sure he didn't realize that at the time. Mostly the movie consists of one lame stunt after another, as the two stars try to save Jean's pregnant wife. Oh, and I won't say how, but they managed to work in a chase by the world's least menacing, most playful tiger. Sadly, the tiger was the best actor in the movie, and even for an animal, it was pretty lame.

3/10 stars - Awful, but not painful

Absurd Yet Endearing

[danfeit · 3/10 · 8 July 2004]

I've seen this film a number of times over the years. Call me mad, but it has a special place in my heart. Admittedly, the acting is awful, and I'm not just talking about Dennis Rodman. The script is ridiculous, full of clichéd references to "the game." And the fight sequences, arguably the only reason to watch the movie, are so dominated by stunt-doubles I wonder if Van Damme and Mickey Rourke ever met during filming.

Still, I love it. Maybe it's a case of "so bad it's good," maybe I'm just partial to Van Damme, or maybe it's because I still have that promotional "Double Team" baseball cap from working in a theater. But whenever this movie comes on cable I am compelled to watch.

For some reason, I'm compelled to drink Coke afterwards....?

Good action Poor acting

[SnoopyStyle · 4/10 · 4 December 2013]

Stavros (Mickey Rourke) is about to sell Plutonium, stolen from the US, to the Iraqis. It is the final mission of secret agent Jack Quinn (Jean-Claude Van Damme) to stop him, and he barely escapes stealing back the Plutonium. It's 3 years later in the South of France, Jack is retired with his pregnant wife. But Stavros is back and the CIA needs Jack to track him down. Dennis Rodman costars as flamboyant arms dealer Yaz.

It's almost painful to watch Dennis Rodman act with Van Damme. Van Damme was never the most natural actor around with his accent. I've often wonder if he should speak in other languages when he's playing secret agents. Reading subtitles would be an improvement.

The action is pretty good. The movie starts off with a major truck chase. It gets off on the right foot. Things blow up, bullets are flying, everybody is kung fu fighting, and there is mayhem everywhere in this movie. I have no complaints about the action.

But there is nothing that can be done with all the bad acting. The story is ridiculous and stupid. It's trying very hard to be something big. While it has most of the look, the movie is nothing more than sub par.

Jean Claude Van Damme meets The Prisoner *** 1/2 out *****

[Welshfilmfan · 7/10 · 21 January 2009]

I actually really enjoyed this JCVD effort, it a had a fair but of money thrown at it in this case $30m plus, it's stylishly filmed, JCVD is as wooden as ever, but there's plenty of action which is what you want in a JCVD flick, and I even don't mind Rodman's performance, he's far from being the worst actor I've ever seen, but the worst part of this movie is that it becomes needlessly complicated especially on the 'Island' which is a reference surely to the 1960's cult TV show with the now late Patrick Mcgoohan.

This film ended up looking like a very good Straight to Video job which is why it surely tanked at the Box Office & after a few more theatrical disasters such as Knock Off & Universal Soldier: The Return (neither of which were that bad) JCVD has been reduced along with Steven Seagal,Dolph Lundgren & Wesley Snipes into straight-to-DVD releases of varying quality but he still has a loyal band of fans who rent/buy these releases, me included.

***1/2 out of *****

Not the finest moment for action cinema...

[paul_haakonsen · 4/10 · 16 December 2015]

I grew up with the movies of Jean Claude Van Damme, and I must say that not every movie he has been involved in has been all that great. And "Double Team" certainly was a swing and a miss.

So what doesn't work here? Well the storyline for starters. It wasn't really all that interesting. Sure it was semi-entertaining for what it was; a mediocre action movie. And the misplaced attempts at humor didn't really work in favor of the movie.

Jean Claude Van Damme delivers his usual action and martial arts, but the script didn't give him much to Work with. But the abysmal choice of Dennis Rodman to star alongside Van Damme was just wrong on so many levels. Dennis Rodman is devoid of anything that even remotely resembles acting talent. And the constant change of his hair color was just downright annoying.

The action sequences are well-choreographed and equally so executed on the screen, but it is hardly enough to salvage this train-wreck of a movie.

There are other far better Van Damme movies out there.

Okay action, but huge logical gaps.

[action-6 · 7/10 · 28 April 2000]

Double Team is the third movie that Van Damme has done for a former HONG-KONG action-movie director. He has done "Hard Target" for John Woo and "Maximum Risk" for Ringo Lam. Double Team is directed by Tsui Hark. Hark is excellent at directing action-scenes and Double Team is a good way for him to start in Hollywood. Van Damme plays agent Jack Quinn, and is sent out to kill super-terrorist Stavros, who is played by Mickey Rourke. Quinn fails and is therefore sent sent to a place called "The Colony". "The Colony" is a place where the world's most dangerous terrorists/agents are sent. These agents/terrorists are too dangerous to go free on the street and too valuable to kill. Quinn escapes from the colony and goes after Stavroes for revenge. Quinn is helped by Yaz, who is played by the basket-star Dennis Rodmann. Double Team is full of well made action and martial-art scenes. However, it`s far from perfect. The whole plot is very silly, there are huge logical gaps and holes in the story and Mickey Rourke is far from convincing as a villain. Double Team isn`t a film for everybody. Van Damme seems like he is out of shape. But it`s definetly worth to rent it for an action-fan. But I must say that "Knock Off" is better. I give this movie 7 out of 10.

God has forsaken us

[changingshades · 1/10 · 5 March 2001]

My holy mother of god what a bad movie. I don't mean bad like MST3K movies were bad. I mean bad like you imagine Hitler was bad. Crazy stupid evil and probably the result of a parent contracting Syphilis. In fact I am pretty sure I would much rather contract Syphilis than watch, strike that, suffer through this "movie" again. Have you ever seen an act of cruelty so unthinking and mindless that you wonder how anyone would ever let this happen? I feel that Double team would fall into this category. Trying to recall this movie is giving a migraine. Please please do not see this movie. If it comes on to your television burn your television and say a prayer that you never will be subjected to this movie.



still not as bad as Hudson hawk

It's awesomeness shines like the heat of a thousand suns

[droog-655321 · 10/10 · 23 May 2005]

This film could never have been bad with these ingredients: An experienced Belgian actor with a penchant for face-kicking and poor dancing, a cross dressing freak-of-nature pro basketball player and Mickey Rourke.

Jean-Claude Van Damme plays family guy come some kind of agent for some kind of anti terrorist organisation Jack Quinn. He hates glass. a lot. At least 2/3 of this whole film is just awesome shots of him either jumping through or throwing other people through various glass surfaces. awesome. Something bad happens and he ends up on a stupid island but no island can hold Jean-Claude Van Damme! He escapes by cutting part of his thumb off, how awesome is that? After he gets off the Island he has to track down the awesomely evil villain Stavros(Mickey Rourke) with the help of wacky sidekick Yaz(Dennis Rodman).

I wont give too much away because you have to see this film for yourself, really. All I will say is that he kicks a tiger in the face! A freakin tiger!

One word: Awesome.

Enjoyable B-movie (if you're in a forgiving mood)

[bowmanblue · 6/10 · 8 May 2020]

If you're into your eighties/nineties action movies, you should probably appreciate muscle-bound heroes thumping hordes of bad-guys into submission. Yes, the films are hardly 'high brow,' but enjoyable if you're in the right mood. Jean Claude Van Damme has starred in plenty of cheesy 'so-bad-they're-good' films such as 'Kickboxer, Bloodsport' and 'Universal Solider.' However, despite 'Double Team' - sort of - fitting into that genre, it's one you could probably pass on, unless you really need your fix of the 'Muscles From Brussels.'

JCVD plays, er, some sort of special ops soldier who, er, ends up fighting bad guys. Do you really need a plot synopsis? He kicks, he punches and he shoots his way through the usual faceless henchmen, but - and here is about the film's only real stand-out selling point - he does it alongside NBA megastar Dennis Rodman.

By all accounts Rodman hasn't starred in too many films and, based on what I saw here, that's quite a shame. I know he's allegedly a bit of a diva in real life and nowadays has 'questionable' friendships, but (in 'Double Team' at least) he really is quite a larger-than-life character and steals every scene from the more 'straight-laced' Van Damme. They play off each other really well and Rodman comes across as a taller, even more flamboyant Wesley Snipes from 'Demolition Man.'

'Double Team' is an okay film in terms of action and plot - there's nothing you haven't seen much before. If you're a Van Damme mega-fan then you could probably do worse than sitting through this - it's only an hour and a half and it's hardly 'hard going.' Plus if you're at all curious as to see how Rodman fairs on screen then this will answer all your questions - it's just a shame he doesn't really - properly - come into it until the final third. The bad guy is Mickey Rourke, but don't expect too much from him as he's barely on screen and I didn't even know it was him until I saw his name in the end credits!

If you like action B-movies like 'Under Siege' then 'Double Team' does fall short of that, which is a shame, as with a bit better writing and polish overall then it could have been a hidden gem rather than a background noise.

Double Team (1997)

[fntstcplnt · 3/10 · 28 December 2019]

Directed by Tsui Hark. Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dennis Rodman, Mickey Rourke, Paul Freeman, Natacha Lindinger, Jay Benedict, Valéria Cavalli. (R)

Incoherent action junk from Hong Kong director Hark, who brought little of his ballyhooed filmmaking prowess to his American debut, matching up Van Damme with NBA superstar Rodman and sending them off to take down pumped-up terrorist Rourke. Van Damme flexes, stretches and jump kicks; Rodman makes a lot of basketball-related puns and sticks out like a sore thumb while trying to sneak around to get the drop on the baddies. It's dumb (real dumb, in fact), but isn't without some preposterous entertainment value; a live grenade placed in a hospital cart with a baby, a fake baby that's actually a bomb, a baby surrounded by landmines--what other movie has not just one but all three of these things? A legitimately cool (but too brief) fight with a henchman wielding a knife between his toes, a tiger chasing people inside a coliseum, an explosion as big and phony as ones that destroyed entire cities in "Independence Day"...too bad it's so shoddily assembled that most of the plot, motivation and movement is entirely senseless. Unintentional howlers and novelty value keep it above the level of dreck--just barely.

32/100

Art in its highest form

[SZM · 22 August 1999]

I just love bad movies. Now many don't make the cut because they simply don't suck to the magnitude needed to make them a "bad classic". This film, however, rockets past others and makes no attempt to disguise its crap-value by including a good actor, plot twist, or a clever bit of dialogue. No, this movie fails (succeeds?) in all categories. I went to the premiere a couple of years back, and still regret that fateful day. Only one other film has traumatized me to that extent (I payed full admission for Congo on the premiere...). Sometimes, no amount of comments will prepare you for a true impact of a film. Schindler's List, Kids, Saving Private Ryan, and... Double Team. See this movie, you will never be the same again.

The Beginning of the End for Van Damme

[lemon_magic · 4/10 · 26 February 2006]

I realize that a lot of people actually enjoyed "Double Team", that its director Tsui Hark is a talented and hard working fellow responsible for some outstanding Hong Kong cinema in years past, and that Jean Claude Van Damme has at least managed to stay pretty buff even as his career declined (unlike his contemporary Steven "Make Mine KFC" Seagal).

But "Double Team" sounded the Death Knell for Van Damme's movie career, which was finished off and consigned to direct-to-video Hell by Hark's follow up "Knock Off" in 1998. (Although I felt that "Knock Off was mildly enjoyable, Hark's off-kilter approach and the 3rd rate screenplay made it tank big-time with American audiences).

It's not that the movie itself was all that bad to look at.It's obviously the work of professionals. The hyper-kinetic camera work and meth-driven action sequences are pretty much what we've come to expect from Hark and his colleagues, there's some reasonably witty give and take in the dialog, a few decent one liners, etc., the actors are reasonably buff, etc. I tried to take all this into account, and all these mitigating elements help a little, but in the end, "Double Team" is obviously the Beginning Of The End.

Why?? Well, we've always known the Van Damme isn't an Actor, he's a Body (like, say, Marc Singer in "Beast Master"). He's only believable in a limited range of roles, and he's very limited in his dramatic range of emotions ( the thick accent has always been a hindrance ). And "Double Team" pretty much signaled that Hollywood had run out of things to do with him, that his fan base and audience was pretty much played out, and that every VD film from now on would be a retread or a derivative, 2nd rate mishegoss. Three major directors had made a shot at bringing him into the mainstream ("Hard Target", "Time Cop", and "Sudden Death"), and Van Damme had been decent-to-excellent in all of them...but all those directors had moved on and Van Damme was now back to making "B" movie fodder.

Or in the case of "Double Team" a 'freak show buddy movie' whose gimmick was that it starred Dennis Rodman as a giant Dennis Rodman. Rodman's whole gimmick as a celebrity (as opposed to his inarguable talent as a pro basketball player) is that he is "outrageous", and the movie stops repeatedly to let him BE outrageous, with various hi tech gimmicks and basketball-themed weapons that seemed to have been invented by your ninth-grade nephew. There are some potentially funny and incisive lines , but the delivery (by both Van Damme and Rodman) pretty much just lies there. Van Damme is particularly "off" in this movie, like he's just going through the motions until his hangover subsides or something.

So it's not a "real" movie, but just a strung together series of set pieces with testosterone-fueled muscle flexing and an almost complete lack of actual human emotion or feeling. Oh, a certain kind of audience will love this kind of thing, but somehow, this particular movie seemed to permanently typecast Van Damme as a 2nd rater, a hack actor in the same vein as Rutger Hauer, Dolph Lundgren and, yes, Steven Seagal...All these actors also started off with a big splash in well designed vehicles that showcased their talents...and then faded into B-to-Z movie hackdom as the casting agencies and action directors moved on to other, fresher faces.

For all his limitations as an actor and an action star, I've always enjoyed Van Damme - he's good looking, he is capable of mild wit and self deprecating humor, and he works hard at maintaining his physique in a career phase where a lot of his action star peers from the same period have let themselves go and have to suck their guts in and hope for a good camera angle. I was sad to see him going through the motions in this silly half-baked excuse for a screenplay.

Not as bad as I intially thought

[dworldeater · 5/10 · 11 December 2021]

I was expecting this to be terrible. This misplaced action team up with JCVD and Dennis Rodman (who has no business in a action movie) was directed by Hong Kong legend Tsui Hark. Tsui Hark is best known as a producer( but also as a director) on some of Hong Kong cinema's biggest hits like the Once Upon A Time In China series, A Better Tomorrow trilogy, the Chinese Ghost Story films. This film pales in comparison to his work in China and is a pretty standard, below average American action movie. JCVD and Rodman have no chemistry, the story is weak and the acting for the most part is pretty bad. I did think Mickey Rourke was a good villain. The action scenes are masterfully done and look great. That aspect of the film is above average, but the story is very weak and generic. "Rodzilla" is pretty annoying here and was cast simply because of his pop culture appeal at the time. This film definitely hurt JCVD and his credibility at the time to try to expand his audience that only hurts him in the long run. It would have been better for Van Damme to have"just said no" to this project. However, Double Team is obviously not the greatest, it is watchable and much better than the last Bruce Willis movie that I watched. Double Team is a hundred times better than Hudson Hawk.

The kind of big silly action film it feels like nobody makes anymore

[youngcollind · 4/10 · 14 April 2022]

It's probably best enjoyed within a group of like minded smart-asses, though if you're not giving it your undivided attention, it's easy to get lost in the needlessly convoluted plot. Eventually, it all feels like an endless series of bad guys coming after Van Damme and him not having any of it. Rodman and Van Damme are in neck in neck competition for who can be the worst actor. Unintentional hilarity abounds, but some of my favourite moments were:

-A weirdly long workout montage that for some reason involves Van Damme weight lifting a (full!) bath tub

-Dennis Rodman's mere existence, especially watching his hair change colour in every scene, regardless of how little that makes sense to the actual plot

-Van Damme being nearly trapped in a tiger laden mine field before Rodman motorcycles in to save the day, only to ignite an explosion and seek refuge behind a Coca-Cola machine, in probably the most intense moment of product placement of the entire 90s. It's poetry.

Underrated, hated, solid good Van Damme action movie!

[ivo-cobra8 · 7/10 · 2 January 2016]

Disclaimer: If you are a viewer that mainly prefers art-house-type movies, then you might as well ignore this review. In addition, if you're not able to take an Van Damme underrated, bashed, hated solid action film, ignore this review, as well. We'll both be better off.

Double Team (1997) alongside with Knock Off (1998) is very underrated, bashed and hated movie, mostly for Van Damme performance. This film has received a lot of negative reviews and was a box office fail. I understand why people does not like this movie, I understand and I like it! It is not one of my top 10 favorite Van Damme movies, but I like it, even more than Knock Off. I have always enjoyed this film more than Knock Off. Double Team was Van Damme's first time filming with Chinese film director Tsui Hark, because one year later, they both made together Knock Off another underrated action movie. In my opinion beside Van Damme, Mickey Rourke and Dennis Rodman both of the actors did a solid job and performance together playing their characters.

There was a lot of explosions, a lot of action scenes, and a lot of martial arts shown from Van Damme and Mickey Rourke. I like the idea, When Jack Quinn (Jean-Claude Van Damme), a former counterterrorist agent fails to catch alive a terrorist leader Stavros (Mickey Rourke) and accidentally one of his Agent's kills Stavros 6.year old son, Jack Quinn is exiled to colony for dead agents on an empty deserted island and their is no escape from this island. Stavros plot's vengeance against Quinn and takes his wife Kathryn (Natacha Lindinger ) as a hostage and her unborn child now Quinn has to escape and team with Jaz (Dennis Rodman) to get his wife back and Stavros once and for all. I love the training sequences and the music score for the movie. I liked the performance from Van Damme and Rodman, I don't think they acted stupid in this movie, they did not! I bagged my aunt to tape me this movie on VHS, when I was a teen and she did. I like this movie a lot, I like the shoot outs.

Double Team was also one of my favorite Van Damme movies. Dennis Rodman and Mickey Rourke co started in this movie. About an CIA agent who misses his target and finds him self on an island for a retired agents and he finds out that his target Stavros kidnapped his wife and his unborn baby and he plans to kill them both unless Quinn escapes. Training and action sequences are excellent and Double Team is also Van Damme's action movie that I like. It is an explosive, high-tech ride. Mickey Rourke was a good bad guy. I really had no idea Paul Freeman was in this movie, he was so awesome in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), I really had no idea he was in this movie as Quinn's guardian. I like when Van Damme fight's off the tiger in the coliseum, those scenes with the tiger where fantastic. I liked that Rodman helped Quinn saving his baby, when the baby case was standing on a mine filed and Rodman saved him. The fights between Mickey Rourke and Van Damme weren't that good, but they were not that bad either. Van Damme and Mickey Rourke both differently worked in The Expendables movies. Rourke in The Expendables and Van Damme in The Expendables 2.

Double Team is a 1997 action film that marked the first American movie directed by Hong Kong director Tsui Hark (A Better Tomorrow III). The film stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as Jack Quinn, a former counterterrorist agent who is exiled to a penal colony for disgraced operatives. Upon his escape, Quinn teams with an arms dealer to track down the terrorist who ruined his life. The film co-stars Dennis Rodman, Paul Freeman, and Mickey Rourke. Director Hark would later collaborate with Van Damme in 1998's Knock Off.

This movie get's 6 by me, I wish I would have this movie on Blu-ray, I am probably the only one that just likes this movie. Much better than Knock Off! The training sequences from Van Damme where really kick ass and the action stunts from Van Damme where solid, so they weren't bad. Sorry Double Team is not your movie, that's okay I like it.

6/10 Grade: C- Studio: Columbia Pictures Corporation, Mandalay Entertainment Film Workshop Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dennis Rodman, Paul Freeman, Mickey Rourke, Natacha Lindinger Director: Tsui Hark Producers: Moshe Diamant, David Rodgers Screenplay: Don Jakoby, Paul Mones Rated: R Running Time: 1 Hr. 33 Mins. Budget: $30.000.000 Box Office: $11,438,337