Knock Off!!!!

[Neville]

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0120724

Ha, ha, can't help it, every time I watch it I laugh almost constantly. Not only is the more solid and more entertaining Van Damme movie yet, it is also wild and terribly funny. Can anyone achive a more sonambulist performance from Van Damme? Can anyone include more silly humour scenes? Can anyone film a better rickshaw race? Tsui Hark is my hero.

P.D. Not to mention his other Van Damme movie, Double Team, a movie where VD and Dennis Rodman jump from a plane inside a beachball.

[Steven Millan]

     Tsui Hark's massively amazing directing(with the new techniques he displays ,ala John Woo's "Hardboiled" and "Hard Target")practically saves this sorry Van Damme film(looks like the Muscles from Brussels is now going to inherit the same bad direct-to-video movie legacy that sadly befallen Dolph Lundgren,and drove him to recent retirement).Judging from his savvy comedic timing with ole Duece Bigalow himself(Rob Schneider),maybe Van Damme ought to turn to comedy as his  big screen theatrical return/resurrection,perhaps take a spinning kick at teen sex comedy,or Jim Carrey-esque slapstick features,for it would probably do some wonder for his career,and have people take him a little more seriously as an actor,instead of the big Beligian cheeseball that Van Damme has become.

[Jay O'Connor]

From Teleport City's review of "The Octogon" (http://www.teleport-city.com/movies/reviews/kungfu/octagon.html)

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For better or for worse Chuck Norris and his big bushy 1970s mustache will forever be the face of the American martial arts film. It's not because his films were any good so much as it is the simple fact that he was there and he never went away. Guys like Jim Kelly and Don Knotts simply faded into the background, while Van Damme and Steven Seagal were relegated to the rows of direct-to-video fare when audiences finally caught on that there was no real reason to be watching On Deadly Ground when you could watch Jackie Chan instead.

By all means, Norris should have joined one of these two groups by now, but like an agile cat, he manages to bend and twist and avoid the arrows, keeping himself just above the ranks of the fallen. Why? Part of it could simply be that he played his cards right. When the time came, he went to television and starting kicking ass in the name of the Republic of Texas. Part of it could be that he's basically a nice, mellow guy in real life while Van Damme and Seagal have raging egos and attitudes. I mean, Chuck is just this laid back cowboy who happens to be able to beat you within an inch of your life. It's sort of like getting your ass kicked by John Denver. You really can't help but like the man even if you don't like the movies. Part of it may be that Chuck never really aimed to be a superstar, and so his decline was less noticeable.
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[Neville]

Despite I don't like Chuck Norris and that "Walker Texas Ranger" means the sum of all horrors to me (I found it  visually incoherent, fascist, racist, all scenes are either to show how good Walker is or how stupid/evil the villains are, etc, etc) I think Jay O'Connor analysis of his career is quite correct. Can you believe the guy rejected "Totall Recall"? See if he cares...

[Squishy]

If you haven't seen The Order, you have NO idea how low Van Damme can fall. He is the Lost Stooge.

(and God yes, Neville, Walker, Texas Ranger is the sickest, most self-agrandizing crap I've ever seen. Monstrous.)

[Jay O'Connor]

> I think Jay O'Connor analysis of his career is quite correct.

In respect, that's not my analysis.  That comes from Keith Allison's review of "The Octogon over at Teleport City.

I just thought it made a lot of sense.  I think Chuck Norris was self-aware enough that he would prefer to be respectable in a TV drama as opposed to making a fool of himself in movies.  I don't think Segal and Van Damme have quite grasped that, yet