Double Team

This is one slam-banger that looks to connect with action fans at home as well as abroad. Read full review

Double Team is loony but likable, a would-be triple double that ends up eking out a victory over its own script. And while Tsui is the man who makes it work, Rodman, on his best bad behavior, does his bit, defers to his teammates. At the end, Rourke and Van Damme pull off their shirts, while Rodman keeps his on. And, wisely, The Worm leaves most of the kicking to his co-star. Read full review

Shrewdly made with an eye for the global market, where the Belgian star is more of a draw than he is Stateside, pic features visually exciting set pieces in alluring tourist sites, putting the audience in a pleasantly mindless state of disbelief. Read full review

Double Team becomes an enjoyably decadent spectacle of gymnastic preposterousness. Read full review

Neophytes may be baffled by the film's weirdly sentimental streak -- the vendetta that drives antiterrorist Van Damme and his nemesis (Rourke) is all about babies -- but by the time Rourke has mined the Colosseum (yes, the Colosseum) and sicced a Bengal tiger on Van Damme, the wise viewer is just sitting back and enjoying the show. Read full review

It's a mad whirl, and Rodman his hair changing color like a traffic light seems right at home in it. [4 Apr 1997, p.49]

And Dennis Rodman? He does a splendid job of playing a character who seems in every respect to be Dennis Rodman. He seems at home on the screen. He's confident, and in action scenes he'll occasionally do a version of the high-spirited hop-skip-and- jump he sometimes does on the court. He looks like he's having fun, and that's crucial for a movie actor. His agent should have told him, though, that if you can't be the hero, be the villain. That's always a better role than the best friend. Read full review

Rodman can't act, but his outsized personality fits right in. Van Damme, as always, does his job and looks good doing it. As for Rourke, he's taken the first step. Now he just needs to rinse and repeat. Read full review

Your reaction to Double Team will probably depend largely on how you feel about concussive action films. While this one is better than most, it still falls considerably short of what I consider to be a "good" movie. One thing's for sure, though: like most flicks that boast more stuntmen than cast members, Double Team is unlikely to function as a Sominex. You may not enjoy it, but you won't fall asleep. And that's the best thing I can say about this loud, brash, ultimately pointless morsel of eye candy. Read full review

Rodman is more fun to watch here than either co-star, given his array of earrings and nose rings, plus hair that changes color more frequently than the first lady changes her do.

Rodman, awkward but definitely lively, is the occasion for har-har hair jokes ("Who does your hair, Siegfried or Roy?") and gives the film some much-needed comic relief. Rourke, as a villain named Stavros, is scary. And for once, he's supposed to be. Read full review

Hark's visual style occasionally strays from standard operating procedure with an arty camera effect or an odd angle. Those flashes of inspiration only serve to make the cliches - such as a coliseum showdown complete with land mines, snipers and a tiger - clunk a little louder. In the big game of entertainment, Double Team barely gets off the bench. [5 Apr 1997, p.2B]

Sure, Double Team is a mind-numbingly silly outing, full of gratuitous violence, testosterone-fueled goonishness, and acting turns that make TV's Van Patten family look positively Emmy-bound, but lest we forget, it's also pulse-pounding, often hilarious fun. Read full review

Badly in need of more humor and humanity, like that found in his best Hong Kong features, Tsui Hark's long-awaited big-budget debut "Double Team" is doubly problematic. Beyond a few sequences with some of the Hark magic and the formidable presence of NBA superstar Dennis Rodman, the Columbia Pictures release is not exactly an airball, but it bounces around the rim and finally fails to go in. [2 Apr 1997]

The glitter and clinking of Rodman's collection of body jewelry are supposed to blind one to the dopiness of the screenplay for Double Team. [4 Apr 1997, p.10]

Instead of story or suspense, Double Team offers a busy sampling of eye candy. [4 Apr 1997, p.C6]

This is rubbish: an incoherent James Bond-ish yarn distinguished only by its formal decadence and the presence of basketball's Dennis Rodman. Read full review

Tough guys snarl at each other or dive out of the way before some explosion reduces their biceps to gymboy tuna. Van Damme still talks like a Belgian choirboy. But he’s physically awesome, of course. He can do things with his body that it hurts to even contemplate. If nature intended for men to do the splits or high kicks, boxer shorts would not have been invented. As for Rourke, I am convinced he’s made entirely of leather. He is essentially a boxing glove with a heartbeat. Read full review

Someone involved in the making of this movie is clearly insane; it should be just a standard buddy/action movie, but aside from lots of kickboxing and shooting and a big fight at the end, it doesn't follow any of the genre's chimp-simple conventions. It may be the worst Van Damme movie ever made. Read full review

I could tell you what Double Team is about, but life is short. Instead, I'll tell you that Van Damme and Rodman play the good guys, and that they trade lines like "You're crazier than my hairstylist!" and "You look like a carrot with earrings!" [5 Apr 1997, p.1G]

ark delivers an abstract exercise in style, a movie so dissociated from any recognizable human emotion or behavior that its actors come to seem like animatronics... I’m bored writing about it. Read full review

Oddly, for such a terrible movie, it looks fabulous. [4 Apr 1997]