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Jean-Claude Van Damme Five Movie Collection

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    Ian Jane
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  • Jean-Claude Van Damme Five Movie Collection



    Released by: Mill Creek Entertainment
    Released on: March 15th, 2016.
    Director: Various
    Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dennis Rodman, Natasha Henstredge, Mickey Rourke, Michael Jai White, Julie Cox, Vivica A. Fox
    Year: Various
    Purchase From Amazon

    The Movies:

    Five Jean-Claude Van Damme movies on two discs. It's a barebones, budget release but man oh man does it ever deliver a lot of bang for your buck. Let's get down to it!

    DISC ONE:

    Maximum Risk (1996):

    Maximum Risk starring Jean Claude Van Damme and directed by none other than Ringo Lam (one of Hong Kong cinema's best) is derivative and almost completely predictable but it delivers what action fans want and expect out of a B-grade Van Damme movie - action, and lots of it.

    In this film Van Damme plays a dual role. Alain Moreau is a French cop who is surprised to find the dead body of Mikhail Suverov, the twin brother he never knew he had, show up in Paris. He decides to question his mother about all of this and when she reveals to him that he really did have a twin brother who she gave up for adoption, he decides to impersonate him to uncover the truth about his past. Moreau, as Suverov, hops on the next plane to New York City (at times, Toronto doubling for The Big Apple - the Zanzibar and Sam The Record Man buildings acting as dead giveaways for anyone remotely familiar with the best city in Canada) where he starts to snoop around.

    A strange cabby who wants to write a novel starts to help Alain out but soon winds up dead and before you know it, the only person Alain can trust is Suverov's ex-girlfriend, Alex Minetti (Natasha Henstridge), a sexy blonde cocktail waitress who works in a club in Little Odessa called The Bohemia. Alex tells him that the Russian mobsters thought he was dead and that he'd best hide. Meanwhile, a couple of FBI agents are making trouble. It seems that Mikhail, who everyone knows thinks is alive thanks to Alain's appearance, had a list that could blow the lid right off of the Russian mafia's operation. The feds want it, the hoods want it, and only he has it. Lots of people fight and Alain and Alex have to deal with plenty of bad guys out to make trouble for them.

    Made around the height of Van Damme's popularity as a box office superstar, Maximum Risk is completely satisfying even if you know exactly where it's all going about five minutes in. Jean Claude doesn't push himself much as an actor here (his last few straight to video films have been surprisingly dramatic... and good!) but he's got enough screen presence to carry the film and he certainly handles himself well during the action scenes of which there are plenty. His chemistry with the very attractive Natasha Henstridge doesn't exactly light the screen on fire but again, it's enough when you consider that the action set pieces and not the character development are really the real reasons to want to watch this picture in the first place.

    Director Ringo Lam, best known for the Chow Yun Fat starring classic Full Contact, keeps the action moving quickly and looking slick. From the opening chase on the streets of Paris to the unintentionally homoerotic brawl in the Russian bathhouse and the shoot out at the end of the picture, there's no shortage of stylized and gratuitous violence in the picture. The movie might border on truly dumb at times, thanks to some completely unnecessary subplots and twists, but it's never boring and it always looks good. Looking at the film now, more than a decade since it was made, it's easy to see the plot holes and the film's flaws but as a film meant to be enjoyed purely on the surface level, it remains a lot of fun. Van Damme and Lam have both made better films before and since this picture but it's hard not to have a good time with Maximum Risk even if you might not want to admit it.

    Double Team (1997):

    Directed by Tsui Hark in 1997, Double Team stars Van Damme as a crack counter terrorism agent named Jack Quinn. His mission? To eliminate Stavros (Mickey Rourke), but try as he might to take the guy down, it doesn't happen. When his mission fails, Jack is shipped off to a place called The Colony - a penal colony of sorts where the deadliest assassins and criminals are kept. These are people that the powers that be don't want running around spilling important secrets but who are too valuable to simply eliminate permanently.

    Quinn remains determined to finish the job, however, so he executes a daring escape from The Colony. Of course, this won't be easy but soon enough Quinn finds an unlikely ally in the form of Yaz (Dennis Rodman), a flamboyant weapons dealer with rainbow colored hair and a ridiculous wardrobe.

    Double Team isn't even close to the high point in Van Damme's acting career (though it might be the high point of Rodman's) nor is it even close to the best thing that Tsui Hark has made. In fact, Double Team is, in a word, goofy. Extremely goofy. There are massive logic gaps and each and every character in the film is a walking, talking cliché. From the world weary agent who just wants to finish his last job and get on with his life to the quirky sidekick to the master terrorist, there's nothing really new here at all.

    And yet, Double Team is pretty entertaining stuff. Not always for the right reasons, mind you, but it is still an amusing watch. Rourke chews the scenery in the way that Rourke tended to chew scenery in the nineties but the real novelty here is just watching Van Damme and Rodman team up. The very sight of the two of them working together to take down Rourke is novel enough on its own, but of course in addition to that we get plenty of dopey dialogue (not surprisingly, Rodman makes a lot of basketball references with his one-liners) and wonky visuals.

    To Hark's credit there are some legitimately impressive action set pieces here (Sammo Hung helped out with the fight choreography) and no shortage of violence and on screen carnage to entertain. Yeah, it's goofy as goofy can be, but it's…. fun.

    Universal Soldier: The Return (1999):

    A few years have passed since the events in the first Universal Soldier film came to an end. The story catches up with Luc Devereux (Jean-Claude Van Damme), who now works as government agency technical expert. Along with his lady partner Maggie (Kiana Tom), the pair have undergone rigorous combat training together to make sure that they're still at the top of their game, as they're the pair who are going to be responsible for tweaking the government's top secret UniSol program. The purpose of revamping the program? They want to make a more advanced breed of soldier - stronger, better, smarter, faster.

    The results of the program are evident immediately. The new breed of UniSol subjects are not only more physically advanced than those that came prior, but they're also connected to one another though a massive artificial intelligence network known as SETH (which stands for Self-Evolving Thought Helix). Unfortunately, the government has run out of funding for the project and needs to shut it down. When SETH learns of this development, it goes rogue and sends out all of the new Universal Soldiers to stop the shut down and kill anyone who gets in its way. The leader of the UniSols is Romeo (Bill Goldberg), a massive hulking man machine, who is seemingly impossible to stop. Only one man can stop SETH and his army before it's too late, and that's Luc, who is the only one who knows the code that can deactivate SETH and shut down the program. SETH has a few more tricks up his sleeve, however, when he teams up with a human computer hacker who goes by the name of Squid (Brent Hinkley). Squid allows SETH to take on a humanoid form (played by Michael Jai White) and head after Luc himself. Meanwhile, Luc has to deal with a nosey reporter named Erin Young (Heidi Schanz) who wants to 'get the scoop' and the overly ambitious General Radford (Daniel von Bargen) who wants to completely eliminate all of the UniSol's as soon as possible.

    What Luc doesn't count on, however, is how cunning SETH really is. When SETH kidnaps Luc's teenage daughter Hillary (Karis Paige Bryant), he leaves Luc no choice but to take him down once and for all.

    Directed by Mic Rogers and co-written by William Malone and John Fasano (the director of the immortally awesome Rock N Roll Nightmare), Universal Soldier: The Return takes the cool concept of the original 1992 Dean Devlin/Roland Emmerich film and milks it for all it's worth. The film is entertaining enough if you can get past all of the bad science and horrible computer logic required to suspend your disbelief, but it lacks the potency of the Van Damme-Lundgren team that made the first in the series so much ultra-violent fun. That said, Michael Jai White makes for a decent enough foe for Van Damme's Devereux, and Goldberg is pretty impressive in his role as the ultra-macho killing machine that is Romeo. Hinkley tends to overdo it a bit as Squid and the hacking scenes are completely ridiculous by today's standards, but the movie is what it is, a incredibly ridiculous follow up to an already ridiculous, albeit very fun, premise.

    The hand to hand combat scenes are handled well here, showing off some impressive fight choreography. The shoot outs lack the tension and excitement that they should have had to really successfully pull us in to the picture, and at times you'll feel like there's too much exposition and not action. A lot of the film is characters running around various labs avoiding conflict rather than reveling in it or embracing it. If the movie is going to go for a dumbed down script, as this one does, it should at least deliver some quality thrills, chills and spills at a good pace to make up for it and hold our attention and Universal Soldier: The Return doesn't quite get there. It has moments that impressive and the finale is fun but these moments don't add up to enough of a whole to really make for an essential watch and the picture is a mediocre effort because of it. It's well shot and hammy enough to make for an okay time killer, but little more than that and odds are pretty good that if you haven't seen the first film, you'll be left scratching your head a few times. There's little here to make this picture stand out and as such, you're not going to find yourself pining away for it time and again.

    The Hard Corps (2006):

    Writer/director Sheldon Lettich has worked with Jean-ClaudeVan Damme a few times on some of his more popular films like Legionnaire and Lionheart so, despite the fact that he wrote the abysmal Double Impact, fans of the Muscles From Brussels had some anticipation for The Hard Corps which would team them up again, this time throwing the lovely Vivica A. Fox into the mix.

    The story revolves around a veteran named Phillip Sauvage (Van Damme) who has recently returned from tours of duty in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Unsure what to do with himself once he returns where he finds himself living in a run down old veteran's home, he and his pal, Clarence Bowden (Julian Christopher) take a job guarding a former heavyweight boxer one night at a dance club. Things are going fine until when the boxer, Wayne Barclay (Razaaq Adoti), and his sister Tamara (Vivica A. Fox) go to exit the club. An SUV pulls up and a few gangsters open fire on them, causing Phillip to have to dive into action. He saves Wayne and Tamara but Clarence is killed in the process, which eats him up inside as Clarence once saved his life in combat.

    Tamara and Wayne are so impressed by Phillip's bravery that they decide to hire him on fulltime to head up their personal security force. Unfortunately, the cops are looking for Phillip, it seems that Uzi he used was illegal and he wasn't licensed to be carrying that weapon. Detective Teague (Ron Bottitta) takes him in and warns Barclay that Phillip is mentally disturbed, scarred from the time he spent in combat. Barclay gives him the benefit of the doubt and puts up his bail money and brings him back on board where he uses Phillip's skills to protect himself from a rap music producer with ties to the underworld who Barclay helped put behind bars. It seems that he's free from prison now and that he wants revenge.

    The Hard Corps is pretty much a by the numbers affair. While Jean-Claude does a pretty decent job of playing the tortured veteran of a war that he know questions, the script doesn't give him much to work with. Much of the running time is spent following the bad guys, and while we obviously need to understand how diabolical this evil rap guy is, there's a little too much screen time afforded him. Do we need to see him partying it up with big-booty dancing girls? Once, maybe. But that'd be it. The film is obviously trying to market itself to the hip hop community which is all well and good but it doesn't do a good job of it and rather than come off as a good action movie or a good hip hop or street gangster movie it instead comes off as a half assed hybrid of the two genres.

    Vivica A. Fox is fun to look at during the almost two hour running time of the film and she does a decent enough job as the smart and sexy sister of the big time boxer. You can believe that she cares around her brother and therefore you can understand her concern, though the way that she goes about setting up the security team is a little unrealistic. Of course, you know from the start that she and Jean-Claude are going to fall for one another and the script delivers as hokey and corny an ending as you'd expect it to - without spoiling it, let it suffice to say that you will know very early on where it's going.

    These types of complaints are part and parcel with the low budget action genre and if the movie delivers the goods in terms of the shoot outs and the fights and the car chases it's easy enough to overlook them. Does The Hard Corps at least do that? To an extent, yes. The first shoot out scene is done quite well and it is a pretty suspenseful set piece. There's also a great scene where Phillip and Wayne get in the ring together that not only provides some heavy hitting and powerful punches but also effectively builds their characters. These moments do shine through and it is for these moments and the reasonably exciting, if utterly predictable, finale that makes this movie worth a look. It isn't on par with better recent Van Damme fare such as In Hell or Wake Of Death but his fans should enjoy it none the less even if it won't likely win him any new ones.

    Second In Command (2006):

    The small Eastern European country of 'Moldavia' has recently seen some political unrest - a new prime minister has been elected by a landslide victory but there is still a faction out there that wants to take him down and gain control of the country for themselves. In order to do this, they place a sniper in such a position that when he opens fire on a crowd outside the palace, it looks like the prime minister's guards did the shooting. Of course, this makes things look really bad and a riot breaks out. Good thing for the prime minister then that an American Marine named Sam Keenan has just shown up at the American Embassy. He and a few of the Marines now under his control break the prime minister out of his office and bring him to the embassy where they hole up and try to figure out just what on Earth is going on.

    Once Keenan has the prime minister safely stashed away, he and his soldiers do a bit of investigating and find out that there's actually a militia group behind the planning of the riots and the murder of an innocent civilian. They've also taken a few hostage, including Keenan's girlfriend - an English reporter, to ensure that they Americans are willing to negotiate. Adding to that is the fact that this militia group has ties to the military and have called in a few favors and as such, are in process of having the embassy surrounded. Keenan and company have called in for reinforcements but Washington says it'll be a good six hours before they arrive, meaning that he and his dozen or so Marines are going to have to work together to fend off the advancing enemy and protect the prime minister from those who would see him dead.

    Sound kind of familiar in the plot department? It should, because Second In Command is very much like The Alamo except with Van Damme in the lead instead of John Wayne, and an Eastern European setting instead of a Texan one… and with more tanks and helicopters. You know what, though? Originality aside, it works and it works well. Second In Command starts off pretty quickly and it builds very nicely right up until the ending. It's predictable and we more or less know how it's going to finish but it is still a lot of fun getting there thanks to some very solid direction, strong action set pieces, and some genuinely cool screen presence courtesy of the Muscles from Brussels himself.

    Say what you will about Jean Claude, the man has made many a bad film, but age has been unusually kind to him in that now that he's a little older, he's got this sort of weathered look to him that works well in the roles he has recently been choosing. Check out Ringo Lam's In Hell or the more recent Wake Of Death for performances similar to the one he delivers here, that of the more world weary and down to earth hero rather than the untouchable kickboxer type he's handled in the past. These parts are definitely a step in the right direction for him, proving that, while he'll probably never be Orson Welles or Humphrey Bogart, the guy isn't a half bad actor when he gets parts that play to his strengths, such as the part he has in Second In Command.

    But how does the action stand up? Let's face it, that's the real reason anyone is going to be checking this one out, right? Well, thankfully the action scenes are strong. There's surprisingly little martial arts action here and most of the excitement comes from the gun play or from the well built scenes of tension that occur before said gun play, but there are a couple of moments where JC snaps a few bones. Lots of shoot outs, sniper scenes, and explosions courtesy of air attack vehicles and hand held rocket launchers bring a whole lot of boom to the movie and there's certainly no shortage of onscreen violence and carnage. Thankfully, underneath all of that is a surprisingly good action thriller.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    Each film is presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition except for Hard Corps, which is 1080i, each framed in its proper widescreen aspect ratio. Mill Creek have put three movies on the first disc and two on the second but they have at least used 50GB discs for this set, so compression isn't a huge problem here thought it definitely leaves plenty of room for improvement.







    Detail won't blow you away as some of the movies look a bit soft but the transfers are adequate. Second In Command in particular is very soft looking but that looks to be the way that it was shot more than anything else as it tends to have a lot of smoke and dust on screen. As to Hard Corps, it's a bit of a mess - it's jittery, frames seem to jump a bit and there's a weird sort of clipping effect. The colors look fine and detail isn't abysmal or anything but this is a very jittery picture for some reason. The screen caps below are a pretty good indication of what to expect here.

    Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo tracks are provided for each film. There are no lossless audio options here, nor are there any subtitles provided. Audio quality is fine but doesn't advance over previous DVD releases at all. There are no problems with any hiss or distortion, dialogue is perfectly easy to understand and quite clear but you don't get the punch during the action scenes or the depth from the score that you'd get out of good quality lossless audio.

    Aside from menus offering movie and chapter selection there are no extra features on this disc.

    The Final Word:

    Yeah, this is barebones and yeah the audio is Dolby Digital 2.0 and yeah, the transfers are probably taken from old masters and won't blow you away but you can get this set right now for less than ten dollars - that puts each movie at under two dollars each. If you're a Van Damme fan and don't already own these films (they've been reissued in various formats a few times now), this is a cheap and easy way to pick up five genuinely entertaining movies.

    Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!


















































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