Replicant (2001)

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs

To start with,don't be put off by the initial fact that this re-teams the Muscles from Brussells with HK director Ringo Lam,with whom he also made the rather poor Maximum Risk,Replicant is in an altogether different ball game.An original,inventive and intriguing flick,which works on nearly all the levels it sets out to.The two Van Dammes thing is admittently getting a little tiresome,but it really does give the Belgian one ample opportunity to show off his neurtured acting skills here,playing dual roles as both the good guy and the bad guy,and really getting into the emotions of each.The dialogue's a little tacky and the build-up's somewhat sprewed,but you get all you expected and even a little more.On the basis of this,Lam/Van Damme's upcoming feature The Monk should be fine viewing.****

Fmovies: Van Damme is in top form in this action film, boasting more action then all of Jet Lis Hollywood offerings it makes me wonder why this never hit the pictures in the UK! Van Damme plays two roles (again!) but this time one of them is a serial killer! The action is good, the story is good, the movie is good....watch it!

Who knew, who knew? I thought I be watching another lameass action flick. I'd pretty much come to the conclusion that only 1 or 2 (if we're lucky) good action flicks, with engaging action choreography, and most important credibility would come out a year, and that the rest would be paint by numbers cliche ridden piles of hob glob, with the story used only to set up the next bland exhausting action sequence, with MTV cuts to make up for zero choreography. So I was pleasantly suprised that I didn't have to add this one to that list. Definitely Jean Claude Van Dammes darkest film outing to date, a movie featuring two monsters one a master the other a monster in training, moonlighting as a hero.

This film is well put together and as such flows very well, with nothing seeming out of place or lacking, it builds to it's conclusion with great competence, and as such holds your interest while making you feel like the ticket you bought was not wasted money, so you leave well satisfied.

Replicant fmovies. I think there is a Zen of encountering movies, not unlike encountering people. You need to get beyond the fact that they are incompetent at carrying who they are and dig into the essence of the person.

Art is all in the carrying, I think so you might find yourself admiring something that is incompetent, unartful, even repellently stupid if it has an engaging heart.

This disaster of a movie has an interesting kernel I think. It is only a disaster because the director and support crew thought that its center was in the thud of flesh between two brutes, a simple serial killer and a simpler cop. But you the viewer have the power to relocate that center to the encounter with self.

(For those who don't know the story, evil killer exists. Shadowy federal agency makes a clone and lends it to the discalced cop who is on the case. The cone has "memories" that are used to track the killer. The clone "grows")

Set aside the bizarre notion of the US government fighting terrorists by making more of them from scratch. (Insert your own political commentary here.) And set aside the notion that memories convey by genetics. The cool idea here, something like in "Faceoff" or "Purple Rose" or "Last Action Hero," or even "Thirteenth Floor." is that a personal stumbling through life has his stumbles fabricated from blows from the world, but has the ability to see them from the outside.

Encountering self is an old idea... in film and literature, and much deeper and more clever notions have been spun than this. But this ain't bad, at least in theory. And for my taste Van Damme is no worse than Li or Arnie and unless you get a real actor everyone else is roughly as good.

If they could just have more Schrader and less Harlin.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Replicant is one of the best films by Van damme, Ringo Lam has done a great job with this picture. Van Damme plays the retarded replicant, and the serial killer Torch. I have never seen anyone play retarded better then Van damme in this film. The fun is that the retard can figth. how anyone can dislike this film i really don`t understand. It don`t get better than this. i know what your thinking... he`s just a stupid die hard van damme fan... yes i am.

I have to admit that "Replicant" succeeded in surprising me quite a few times, which is surprising itself since I wasn't ready for any surprise in a direct-to-video-van Damme-movie. But this movie is not like your average van Damme-stupidity. In some way this is good, in another way it is not.

What I was hoping for was 90 minutes of fun that makes me laugh very loud the way "Double Team" or "Streetfighter" managed to do. I was afraid of seeing 90 minutes of boring stupid action with only few unintentional laughs, like "The Quest" or "Knock Off". "Replicant" walks on a thin line between those extremes.

Well, it is the third movie in which van Damme appears in two roles at the same time and it is a strange record for an action star. At first we see the bad guy, a serial killer with long hair who kills mothers by killing and then burning them. He does this because his mother used to call him "bad boy" and once almost burned him alive. Michael Rooker plays the cop who tries to catch the killer and the movie sometimes suggests that the killer also plays the typical "serial killer-movie game", in which the killer seems to kill just for the cop who chases him. But this is just a sidenote in the film whereas it is a major point that Rooker is very obsessed in finding the killer. Where this obsession comes from is never explained and this contributes to a lot of the weird aspects of the film.

One day after Rooker again managed NOT to catch the killer some government guys approach him and make an interesting offer. They want to clone the killer and try to catch him with the memories of the real killer in the clone's brain (that's what I think is their plan). The way the "clone"-thing is introduced must be seen to be believed. We never get the feeling that the movie plays in the future and neither the science guys nor Rooker as the cop make a big deal of simply cloning another person for an investigation. When Rooker is told about the clone idea his reaction does not exist. He simply accepts not questioning for a mili-second what is going on. Even more strange is the fact that the government guys even think of trusting Rooker to take care of the clone. And for no reason at all Rooker uses this trust by deceiving them time after time, by refusing to cooperate but these "National Security" guys never mind at all. Neither do Rooker's relatives and partners who very very rarely wonder why he has a new pet and why it looks like the serial killer everyone's looking for?

It may seem strange to go into such deep plot discussions but the movie plays so seriously that it's hard not to do. That's the weird thing here: the film only scarcely tries to go for cheap effects and shortcuts. For a van Damme movie the action is very rare and except maybe two scenes not very spectacular.

And then there is van Damme's performance as the clone. The clone, who is never referred to with any name, seems like a mixture between a retard and Jackie Chan. He hardly speaks, looks bewildered and confused but can also swing himself around pipes a dozen times, jump around like a monkey and fight like a karate dog. I'm not quite sure where he has the fighting abilities from and why they developed so much better than his thinking abilities. To say the least, it is an interesting performance but it also produces some laughs especially because of the way Rooker treats him.

Rooker has the strange