Maximum Risk

When he's firing on all cylinders, Hong Kong's Ringo Lam is one of contemporary cinema's most accomplished (and diversified) action filmmakers, having directed everything from the exhilarating comic-book thrills of Full Contact's computer-generated gun battles and Burning Paradise's gory martial-arts action to the dark, streetwise drama of his justly acclaimed “On Fire” crime trilogy (the first of which, City on Fire, is now widely recognized as the blueprint for Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs). Unfortunately, Maximum Risk, Lam's first foray into big-budget Hollywood filmmaking, isn't in the same league as those earlier classics, thanks to Larry Ferguson's sluggishly paced script and some supremely lame comic relief, not to mention a shoddy lead performance (surprise!) from Belgian kickboxing hunk Jean-Claude Van Damme. Here, Van Damme broods endlessly as a French cop who, upon discovering that his long-lost twin brother has been murdered, sets out for New York to uncover his bro's checkered past, which has something to do with both the FBI and the new Russian mafia. Yeah, whatever. The “Muscles From Brussels” is as wooden as ever, and his co-star, model-turned-actress Natasha Henstridge (overrated as Species' pretty spine-snapping monster), matches his every emotionless expression with one her own, although it must be noted that her thankless “love interest” role gives her precious little to do but pout and disrobe. Thank God Lam manages to infuse the whole affair with at least a little of his moody style. Lam also delivers plenty of wild action, including a wonderfully preposterous fruit-cart chase, a death-defying leap into the path of an oncoming subway train, and a bone-crunching, semi-nude sauna punch-up -- all of which are mere warm-ups for the berserk final act that kicks off with an ultra-violent brawl in a bank elevator and, one exploding van and car chase later, finds our hero battling a chainsaw-wielding FBI agent in a beef-packing plant while dangling upside down from a meathook! Nifty, huh? Admittedly, some of these impressive moments come close to the kinetic set-pieces found in some of Lam's Hong Kong films, but the down-time between these admittedly bravura sequences seems about twice as long as it actually is, and, for a movie featuring a star whose acting range is as obviously limited as Van Damme's, Maximum Risk takes itself way too seriously. Sure, it isn't every day you're going to see a Hollywood action flick with references to both Dostoevski and Bret Easton Ellis, but these intriguing quirks are, alas, not necessarily signs of intelligence; more likely they're awkward pretensions. Too bad, because those who have seen Lam's best work know he might have pulled it off… if, just maybe, he had a more capable leading man.