Knock Off
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.90 You Save: $6.09 (61%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.06 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Canada
Movie Reviews of Knock Off
Movie Review: Great Performance by Van Damne
Summary: 4 Stars
I rented this movie on video like 4 years ago,my whole family watched it and we were all pleased.And like a year ago i saw it on DVD and i loved watching it again.I think this movie will go in the top 10 of Van Damnes best movie but not the top 5. Im gonna name the top 5 Van Damnes best movies. Kickboxer, Bloodsport,Lionheart,Desert Heat,Hard Target.Im like the biggest Van Damne fan,and this one is worth watching.It deserves****A very good movie.Movie Review: How did this movie flop?
Summary: 4 Stars
This was a really cool movie with great stunts, great comedy, and great camera views. This was plain and simply one of the best JCVD movies ever. I find amazing how this film, Leigonaire, and Universal Soldier:The Return all did not revive his career. It is a total mind F*** to figure this out. The plot was a little confusing at first but if you really pay attention you will get the idea of the movie.Movie Review: Great action film mixed with hongkong stylish action
Summary: 4 Stars
There are so many interesting items in this movie. ricksha-race, tiny microbombs, fighting on a huge ship. After DOUBLE TEAM, famous hongkong director Tsui Hark created a great movie again. You can also enjoy the scenes of hongkong transition.Movie Review: Great 4 Stars
Van Damme plays as a jeans dealer. JCVD joins up with the cia to take on terroristsMovie Review: A good de Souza script botched up by chaotic camerawork
Summary: 3 Stars
"Great film. Lots of action... Lots of... what else?" - Jean-Claude Van DammeHong Kong movies often have impressive stunts and fighting scenes, and the better sort (e.g. Jackie Chan's *Rumble in the Bronx*) sometimes even have good camerawork and photography. What they almost never have, however, is a really good script.
*Knock Off* is precisely the opposite: it was written by one of Hollywood's best action screenwriters, Steven E. de Souza, the author of the first two *Die Hard*, among other classics. De Souza knows what drama is about, and if you try to abstract from what you see to what the original script must originally have looked like, you'll realize that behind *Knock Off* is a really good story involving fake designer jeans, Russian nanobombs, a CIA traitor, Hong Kong cops and enough twists and turns to make a highly entertaining story, livened up by a wacky, tongue-in-cheek attitude reminiscent of the author's *Hudson Hawk*.
However, seeing that might require much more effort than the ordinary movie-goer is capable of, for visually, the movie is completely spoiled by its director, Tsui Hark, who had done a much more decent job on the *Once Upon a Time in China* series. In the making of, actor Michael Fitzgerald Wong says of Tsui Hark that he "loves chaos". As for Tsui Hark himself, he explains he "tried to make the camera as free as possible", so as to give the impression of a "lunatic rushing through everything". This gives you an idea of his style, which is so epileptic and full of mannerisms that the action often becomes virtually incomprehensible, and that it is sometimes hard to understand who is doing what to whom where.
Moreover, the actors obviously lack proper direction, and if Rob Schneider and Paul Sorvino have enough experience to compensate for it, a less trained actor like Van Damme, left to his own devices, becomes a caricature of himself (though, admittedly, this is partly intentional.) Moreover, since the last twenty minutes are just a mindless, uninterrupted Tsui Hark action scene, the film is very likely to leave you with a bad impression, as most of the plot is resolved by the time it begins, and all that is left is for the good guys is to shoot (or blast or crush or dissolve in acid) the bad guys.
In my opinion, *Time Cop* remains Van Damme's best movie to this date. But with a better director, *Knock Off* would not have been far behind. I just hope Hollywood will not blame de Souza for the failure.
(Hong Kong movie-buffs might be interested to know that the second-unit director on this movie was Sammo Hung and that apart from Michael Wong, there's also a small role for Jeff Joseph Wolfe, who played a sympathetic cowboy in the Dr. Wong movie set in America.)