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In the beginning, it seemed like just another normal day in America. On this day, like any other day, babies were born, people fell in love, coworkers discussed the witty antics of the previous night’s Friends episode, and Bill Clinton slept soundly in his White House bed. However, it was on this day that a film was released which has caused historians to call 9/4/98 as “the day everything changed.” It was on this day that a group of brave men and women from across the globe came together to tell a simple tale of exploding designer blue jeans. This story, as you probably know from reading history books, was named Knock Off. It starred the on-screen folk hero Jean Claude Van Damme, or as the upper crust call him, The JCVD. This actor, once named Jean Claude Von Verrinburg and foolish called The Muscles From Brussels, gives a performance that brought tears to eyes more then anything else in 1998—even more than the hit “Song for Mama” by Boyz II Men. Touching, powerful, important and completely stupid, Knock Off is a film that not only defines a mythical career, but a decade in high art cinema. The
JCVD here shows his immense acting range as Marcus Ray, who is known
in Hong Kong as “King of the Knock Offs.” For those
few of you out there who are unfamiliar with the finer points of
this film phenomena, knock offs are nothing to joke about. As the
film shows, crappy bootleg rip-offs of American brand name things
like blue jeans and shoes are all over Hong Kong and man, is the
world ever pissed about this. Everyone from the Russian Mafia, Hong
Kong gangsters the CIA, to The JCVD is all worked up about these
knock offs and ready to die for them. The film’s opening sequence
proves this cold, hard fact by showing a massive police scuba diving
operation going on to try and get some knock off baby dolls that
are at the bottom of some ocean. Just as the scuba team, gets close,
the dolls explode in what else but a gigantic green fireball explosion.
When knock offs explode, it’s scientifically proven to be
always green fire. GREEN FIRE, got it? Soon after the GREEN FIRE
a speedboat chase breaks out in search of whoever blew up the dolls.
Now, I’ve heard some cinema snobs say there’s never
been a good movie that featured a speedboat chase. To them I have
only six words: Police Academy 5: Mission to Moscow. Put that in
your briefs and snap it, Roger Ebert! After that for some reason, there’s a rickshaw race in which Rob and JCVD go against a midget in a blue jumpsuit and Rob smacks JCVD’s butt with a giant fish and yells, “C’mon! Move that big beautiful ass of yours!” Right. Moving on, it turns out that the blue jeans being made by our stars have bombs in them so the Russian Mafia can “hold America’s security at ransom.” As we all know, the only thing that can stop this fiendish plot is tons of heavily choreographed kung fu. After a scene where JCVD finds out he’s wearing a pair of exploding blue jeans and runs around like a coked-up squirrel in silky black briefs, the whole movie winds down at a climatic action scene on a giant boat. JCVD rides in to save the day (on a speedboat) and fights a ton of guys, the best of whom uses the lenses from glasses as very small, very silly little blades. Somewhere in here, real actor Paul Sorvino shows up for some reason and gets to say lines like, “It’s entrepreneurship, baby cakes,” before punching a woman in the face. And Sorvino still doesn’t have an Oscar in this cruel world. Anyway, everything ends with JCVD shirtless and jumping onto a speedboat to avoid a giant green explosion. Also to be noted: during this climax, in one shot the skies above the action are rather sunny, in the next it is raining heavily, and after that it is just cloudy. People can easily criticize this as poor filmmaking, but I wonder if those people have ever experienced just what crates of Hong Kong knock offs exploding in green fireballs can do to weather. It’s far too complicated to explain, but let me just say that green fireballs screw up weather real bad. You can quote me on that. As the credits roll and we here the hot hit theme song “It’s a Knock Off” with weighty lyrics like “Bought it at a mall, so close to real, the look, the feel, it’s a knock off,” one may start to wonder, just who were the enlightened minds behind this film? The script was by Die Hard writer Steven DeSouza, who may have suffered a major head injury as he also directed The JCVD’s Street Fighter and wrote this one all by himself. Knock Off was directed by the Asian king of the ridiculous Tsui Hark, who is 53 years old and has been involved in over fifty-five films, including the mind boggling Time and Tide and the Once Upon a Time in China series, starring Jet Li. Hark fills every frame of the film in dizzying over-the-top camera work like in a scene where JCVD’s foot acts as a camera as it enters a knock off shoe. Having previously directed JCVD in his classic pairing with Dennis Rodman in Double Team, Hark knew how to give JCVD the best lines, the best silky black briefs and how to shoot his face so that the giant bump on his forehead wouldn’t distract the audience so much. After the completion of Knock Off, The JCVD had just one more film to open in U.S. theaters before his later screen epics would make their straight-to-video debuts. The reason is simple: Knock Off proved that his films were far too dynamic and intense for American theaters and the projectors showing them run the constant risk of exploding into green fireballs. Still, Knock Off continues to fascinate the young and elderly with it’s timely message and speedboats. When recently asked about Knock Off, The brilliant and well spoken thespian JCVD gave the meaningful, cryptic response: “The combination of Knock Off and Hong Kong is like Blade Runner on Earth.” For those who remind us that Blade Runner was indeed set on Earth, I have only five words: Universal Soldier 2: The Return. Viva JCVD! A2P |
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