My Review of Double Team

In searching the internet, I could not find a single solitary positive review of Double Team. So I decided to write my own review.

Short Synopsis

Although this movie has an international espionage appeal, that's not really what the film is about. What gives it the espionage flavor is the fact that Van Damme plays Quinn, a retired spy who was best in his line of work, and when he appears to get killed in the first part of the film, he is imprisoned with other "dead" spies to assist world leaders in solving international terrorist problems. This movie is really about a man trying to save his wife and unborn (until toward the end of the movie) child from his arch enemy (Stavros, played by Mickey Rourke). Dennis Rodman played a very colorful arms dealer called Yaz.

My Opinion

The first time I saw this movie, I missed the first 30 minutes and had not a clue as to what was going on until I saw it again from beginning to end. It came on cable on a Saturday night while I was cooking supper. So if you missed any of the beginning of this movie and did not like it, watch it again from the very beginning to the end. I thought it was a very good movie despite the fact that Van Damme was on drugs at the time it was filmed. When I saw it, I thought he must have lost some weight, and he confirmed that fact in his appearance on the Jay Leno Show in Sept 1998.

In my opinion, the reason why this movie did not fare too well at the box office was Rodman. Not that Rodman gave a poor performance, but that he was too shockingly colorful to Van Damme's fans. My husband would have liked this movie (because he loves espionage) except that he refused to watch the whole show because Rodman was a turn off. At first glance, the neon hair and clothes, tatoos and body-piercing (yuck!) is a turn off for me. But as I got past that and began to understand the story, I realized that anything less colorful would have made the movie very dry and boring. For this reason, I thought Rodman did a good job, and Van Damme mixed very well with him in their respective roles.

My overall opinion of this movie was that it was very well written and put together. The Director, Tsui Hark, included some interesting camera effects. Also, this movie is remarkably clean compared to Van Damme's previous movies, Maximum Risk and Nowhere To Run. There was no female nudity and very few cuss words (although I missed the usual passionate love scene which Van Damme does so well!).

One Possible Error Noted

When Yaz bolts into the Colosium for the 1st time, Quinn trys to warn him of the mines. He is supposed to yell, "The crosses, they're mines." It sounds like Quinn is saying, "The crosses, they're mimes." Maybe it was a typo in the script and Van Damme didn't really understand what he was saying so he didn't know that it was a typo. If anybody knows the answer to that one for sure, email me and let me know.