Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Natasha Henstridge, Zach Grenier, Jean-Hugues Anglade
Director: Ringo Lam
Producer: Moshe Diamant
Screenplay: Larry Ferguson
Cinematography: Alexander Gruszynski
Music: Robert Folk
U.S. Distributor: Fine Line Features
All of the sudden, after years of languishing in art houses and specialty film festivals, the luminaries of Hong Kong cinema are breaking into the mainstream American market. Jackie Chan, one of the best-known action stars in the world, scored a modest financial hit with Rumble in the Bronx. Actor Chow Yun-Fat has been working on something called The Replacement Killers. Director John Woo already has two English-language features under his belt (Hard Target and Broken Arrow), and there are more to come. Now, another of Hong Kong's celebrated film makers, Ringo Lam (director of City on Fire, which is the likely inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs), has reached U.S. screens. His Hollywood debut is called Maximum Risk, and everyone eagerly awaiting the film's release is in for a big disappointment.
Watching Maximum Risk, I had the feeling I'd seen the film before. I hadn't, of course, but the generic nature of the plot and action sequences, not to mention the presence of Jean-Claude Van Damme, made everything seem all-too-familiar. If I hadn't known beforehand that Lam was the director, I never would have guessed it. Maximum Risk displays little of the style that has gained the film maker an international following. This is the kind of job that a hack director could have accomplished.
The plot is rather convoluted, and frequently doesn't make sense, but I'll try to present the cogent details here, for anyone who's interested. Van Damme plays a dual role. He starts off as Mikhail Suverov, a high-ranking member of the Russian Mob's American chapter. When Mikhail is killed in a car chase in South France, a French cop who looks eerily like the dead man is brought into the case. As it turns out, the policeman, named Alain Moreau, is actually Mikhail's twin (screenwriter Larry Ferguson must have been watching a soap opera when he came up with this twist). The two were separated shortly after birth when their mother realized she couldn't care for them both. Now, with Mikhail dead, Alain is determined to discover all he can about his brother's life and death. His investigation leads him to New York and Mikhail's girl friend, Alex Minetti (Natasha Henstridge). Alain also meets a sadistic gangster named Ivan (Zach Grenier), a bunch of ugly thugs, and a group of crooked FBI agents. Soon, he and Alex are in over their heads, and running for their lives.
We're talking pedestrian action here. There are all the usual staples: car chases, foot chases through moving traffic, foot chases across rooftops, fist fights (with a little kick-boxing thrown in for good measure), and shootouts. I kept expecting Lam to do something unique, but, by the time the end credits started rolling, I realized it was a vain hope. This is just another story of Van Damme hunting, and being hunted by, a variety of stereotypical bad guys. There's no room in the formula for improvisation or originality.
Van Damme's presence is an immediate disadvantage (just ask John Woo; the action star headlined his American debut, Hard Target, which went down in flames at the box office). While the actor is capable of handling action sequences, his acting range can charitably be described as "limited", so any emotional component to Maximum Risk is irretrievably lost. We're supposed to believe that Alain is distraught over the death of the brother he never knew he had, but Van Damme's wooden expression doesn't get the point across.
Then there's Natasha Henstridge as The Love Interest. In Species, she didn't show much in the way of acting ability, but wasn't shy about displaying her physical attributes. Here, this cookie-cutter role doesn't exactly challenge her range, but it gives her another opportunity to expose the assets that were much in evidence in that previous outing. Beyond that, however, there's not much to Alex, and any romantic heat that might have been generated is diffused by the complete lack of chemistry between the leads. Henstridge and Van Damme together couldn't light a cigarette.
It's reasonable to hope that Lam agreed to direct this movie because it was a means of entrance into the American film market. Even then, however, there's no denying that this is the most unpromising of beginnings. It took John Woo three years to recover from working with Van Damme. Let's hope the same misfortune doesn't befall Lam. As for a trip to the theaters... instead of seeing Maximum Risk, rent one of Lam's Hong Kong films. They highlight the talent that is woefully unapparent in this generic action flick.
© 1996 James Berardinelli