Twice the Van Damme means double the damme trouble in Double Impact!
In this low-budget action flick, Jean-Claude Van Damme plays twin brothers, Chad and Alex Wagner. When they were just six months old, their parents were murdered in Hong Kong and the brothers were separated. Chad grew up to become a goody-goody martial arts instructor in Los Angeles. Alex grew up to become a part of the Hong Kong underworld. Under the direction of the parent’s former bodyguard, Uncle Frank (Geoffrey Lewis), the twins are reunited and team up to take down the gangster who killed their parents.
When it comes to second-tier 90s action heroes, Jean-Claude Van Damme was never as good as Dolph Lundgren but he was still a thousand times better than Stephen Seagal. The secret of Van Damme’s success was that, in real life, he was capable of doing all of the thing that he did in the movies. Van Damme didn’t need a stunt double or trick editing to look athletic. It’s easy to laugh at Van Damme’s propensity to do the splits in every film he made but everyone knows that if Stephen Seagal had ever tried to do the same thing, he probably never would have been able to stand back up.
Double Impact was made early in Van Damme’s career, after he had established himself with Bloodsport but before he went mainstream with Timecop. Van Damme is credited with co-writing the script and it’s the first Van Damme film to feature him playing twins, an idea to which he would return a surprising number of times. The movie is full of moments between the twins that were designed to make critics and audiences say, “He really can act!” Unfortunately, at that time, Van Damme really couldn’t act. Chad smiles like a goof. Alex smokes a cigar and is an angry drunk. When Chad fears that his mentor has been murdered, he shouts, “NO!” in a way that will remind you of Rainier Wolfcastle’s reaction to his partner getting gunned down in McBain. That’s the extent of their characterizations. It wouldn’t be a problem except that the movie is nearly two hours long and that’s a long time to spend listening to Jean-Claude Van Damme argue with himself.
There are a few action scenes, which is the main reason for watching any Van Damme film other than JCVD, but they’re mostly perfunctory. The bad guy’s main henchman is played by Bolo Yeung and the fight scenes between him and Van Damme are exiting to watch. Otherwise, Double Impact is damme forgettable.
What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!
Last night, if you were suffering from insomnia at one in the morning and you turned over to one of the Cinemax stations, you could have watched the 1993 film, Only The Strong.
Only The Strong is an example of a film genre that is a personal favorite of mine. This is one of those films where a dedicated but unorthodox teacher returns to his old high school and saves a bunch of troubled teenagers by teaching them how to beat the crap out of each other. (For another example, check out The Principal.) It’s hard for me to explain why I always enjoy these films. I’m always tempted to say it’s because there’s a part of me that would love to be a teacher but, honestly, that answer is way too easy. Add to that, if I was a teacher, I doubt I’d be one of the “I’m going to teach you how to beat the crap out of each other” teachers that tend to show up in these films. It seems like that would be a lot of effort.
In fact, now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever met a “I’m going to teach you how to beat the crap out of each other” type of teacher. I get the feeling that these teachers might not actually exist. Maybe that’s why I like these films. For someone, like me, who went to a very nice but somewhat boring high school in the suburbs, a film like Only The Strong is the ultimate fantasy of what high school was like.
Anyway, in Only The Strong, Mark Dacascos plays Louis Stevens. Louis was a troubled teenager but, luckily, he took a sociology class taught by Mr. Kerrigan (Geoffrey Lewis). Kerrigan taught Louis that there was something more to life than just selling drugs and getting into fights. After he graduated, Louis joined the Green Berets and spent four years living in the jungles Brazil. In Brazil, he learned capoeira, a type of martial art that combines dance, acrobatics, and kick boxing. In fact, Louis got so good at capoeira that, when he is recalled to the states, a village wiseman gives him a special instrument, a musical bow called a berimbau.
Louis returns to his old high school and visits Mr. Kerrigan. He discovers that Kerrigan has been beaten down by life and is no longer the inspiring teacher that he once was. He also discovers that his ex-girlfriend, Dianna (Stacey Travis), is now a teacher and she’s dating another teacher, Hector Cervantes (John Fionte). Hector assumes that Louis worked for the CIA in Brazil and accuses him of organizing death squads.
Annoyed by what has happened to his old high school, Louis starts to leave. However, before walking out, he uses capoeira to beat up a Jamaican drug dealer. Everyone is so impressed that Louis is soon working for the high school, teaching 12 of the school’s worst students both capoeira and self-discipline…
(To be honest, as I watched the movie last night, none of the 12 students really seemed to be that dangerous to me. It was difficult to imagine the majority of them ever committing a felony, though I could visualize more than a few of them waiting in line at Starbucks. Then I remembered that this movie was made in 1993 and perhaps it was easier to scare audiences back then.)
It doesn’t take long for Louis to start to make a difference. In fact, it only takes a four-minute training montage. Soon, those 12 students are being respectful and thinking about the future. Donavon (Ryan Bollman) is even remixing capoeira music and acting so worshipful towards Louis that you just know that he’s going to end up getting killed towards the end of the film, in order to provide Louis with the proper motivation to go out and kick some ass. Unfortunately, the local Brazilian drug lord is not happy about Louis’s influence (especially after Louis encourages the drug lord’s cousin to spend his weekend camping instead of stripping cars). Needless to say, it all leads to a violent showdown. It also all leads to one of those inspiring graduation ceremonies that always tend to pop up in movies like this.
Anyway, Only The Strong is one of those films that currently has a 0% rating at the Rotten Tomatoes but I thought it was kind of fun in its own stupid way. (It probably helps to be half-asleep when you watch it.) Even if you don’t buy into the film’s argument that it could be used to save an inner city high school, capoeira is a lot of fun to watch and Mark Dacascos has an appealing smile, which serves to set him apart from a lot of the other actors that starred in actions films in the 1990s. Only The Strong is silly but fun, making it a good film to watch at one in the morning.
Twice the Van Damme means double the damme trouble in Double Impact!
Through the Shattered Lens 