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| Images courtesy of MVD Rewind Collection |
Hong Kong based filmmaking maestro Tsui Hark the director of
Peking Opera Blues and eventual writer-producer-director of the first
three Once Upon a Time in China films was insanely prolific in the Chinese
film industry. A revered figure in the
Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema who also served as a producer on films like John
Woo’s The Killer and part time character actor in many of his own films,
Hark eventually made his foray into the United States arena of action movie
filmmaking with his 1997 buddy comedy Double Team (reviewed here by Michelle Kisner). Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and basketball
star Dennis Rodman in the leading roles as a counter-terrorist agent and a
weapons dealer tee off against Mickey Rourke as an arch-villain, it was a
modest commercial success but found itself pigeonholed by the critics including
the winning of four Razzie Awards for Worst Actor Dennis Rodman. Nevertheless, Hark did one more English
language film with Van Damme in 1998 called Knock Off before returning
to Hong Kong and it comes to 4K UHD via the MVD Rewind Collection’s Laservision
line designed to look like a makeshift CED SelectaVision video disc.
Hong Kong fashion designer Marcus Ray (JCVD) discovers in
addition to counterfeiting cheap fake products such as clothing that tears
easily or shoes whose soles come off like Scotch Tape, there’s a deadly
operation involving Russian agents hiding button-sized micro bombs hidden
inside the Knock Off products.
Soon he teams up with Tommy Hendricks (Rob Schneider) whom he thinks is
another fashionista but in actuality is an undercover CIA agent intent on
trying to locate the production of the knock off bombs. Soon their efforts cross paths with mercurial
CIA boss Harry Johansson (Paul Sorvino) meanwhile another secret agent, Karen
Lee (Lela Rochon) comes into the picture and we find ourselves guessing as the
film pulls the rug out from under us who our alliances lie with. Eventually it balloons into a fiery action
epic whose visual effects pyrotechnics range from being slick and dangerous to
cheeseball and corny photoshop looking.
Supposedly scored by Sparks despite assertions much
of their music was replaced by other composers and shot in scope Super 35 by
Arthur Wong, Knock Off ranges between being very elegantly cool and
stylish to feeling like a PlayStation 1 videogame. The 4K scan and restoration is good featuring
a 16-bit scan of the original camera negative with original DTS-HD 5.1 audio
and a second disc worth of extras, though fans of Tsui Hark’s Hong Kong work
will take this as a check-your-brain-at-the-door genre thriller. Word has it Sammo Hung was a second-unit
director on this and this is the last film to feature the Kai Tak Airport
before it was shut down later that year.
Where it works pretty well are the action stunt sequences which are
breathtaking in motion and to our surprise, Rob Schneider who is ordinarily a
comedian serving up one-liners in Adam Sandler comedies really gets entrenched
in the physical action stunts. Scenes
where the comedian is thrown through walls or gets involved in intense physical
altercations gave me a modicum of newfound respect for the actor if only because
he gets knee deep in the shit. JCVD is
fine though we’re looking at his physical abilities as a martial artist and not
as a dramatic performer. Probably the
one having the most fun here is Lela Rochon who struts her high heels as a sexy
yet strong femme fatale before becoming a formidable ally, using her sex appeal
to upstage her male comrades JCVD and Rob Schneider onscreen. Paul Sorvino is in sleepwalking mode but sometimes
that’s okay for an otherwise great character actor.
Budgeted at $35 million, the film did reasonably well at the
box office with $44 million but was otherwise eviscerated by the critics. A 90s actioner with hints of the Hong Kong
maestro on display but otherwise a lot of silliness and undeveloped characters,
the film was attacked as incoherent by many while others said it had perhaps
the strongest crossover appeal for JCVD given the film’s cheeky humor from Street
Fighter writer-director Steven E. de Souza.
Tsui Hark would return to Hong Kong after this, but JCVD fans will
nevertheless eagerly pick this up as part of the ongoing Laservision 4K line
from MVD’s Rewind Collection. MVD’s set
winds up being a two-disc set replete with newly filmed interviews, archival
audio commentaries and interviews and an original electronic press kit and a
collectible mini-poster. MVD’s Laservision
line is fun and promises more JCVD titles, just know to lower your bar and
expectations some going in. You might
come out of this losing a few brain cells.
--Andrew Kotwicki
