Peter Principle teaches us that any individual, no matter how talented and successful, is bound to reach the level of incompetence. That explains why great generals turn into mediocre politicians, popular US President become poor world leaders and talented and successful novelists turn out to be poor screenwriters. Dennis Rodman, one of the world's most popular basketball players and celebrities, succumbed to the same phenomenon while trying to become a film star. Results of his efforts can be seen in Double Team, 1996 action thriller directed by Tsui Hark.
Rodman might be the bigger star, but the real protagonist of this film is played by Jean Claude Van Damme. The plot starts with Quinn, former top CIA counter-terrorism operative, being brought from retirement in order to take out Stavros (played by Mickey Rourke), world's most dangerous terrorist who has recently stepped out of shadows. Quinn gathers his team in Antwerp and purchases equipment from Yaz (played by Dennis Rodman), flamboyant arms dealer. The mission, however, turns into bloody failure that would claim the life of Stavros' son and leave Quinn seriously injured. Quinn is transferred to "Colony", super-secret facility that houses world's secret agents that are "too valuable to kill and too dangerous to be let loose". While Stavros kidnaps Quinn's wife Kath (played by Natasha Lindinger), Quinn escapes from "Colony" and seeks Yaz in order to fight Stavros again.
Plot and characters from Don Jakoby's script are nothing more than an excuse for Hong Kong director Tsui Hark to stage some visually impressive yet surreal and unintentionally funny action scenes. All that is very entertaining, but Double Team from one big problem - the whole idea behind it was to pair up Van Damme with Rodman. Former basketball star actually does very good acting job, because the character of Yaz was in many ways based on his real life self. But Dennis Rodman is so effective with his antics that his performance easily outshines Van Damme, turning Belgian martial arts expert into something resembling serious dramatic actor. This only underlines serious problems with plot and characters, thus preventing Double Team to become "guilty pleasure" that was supposed to be.
RATING: 4/10 (+)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on December 29th 2003)
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