Replicant is the best movie so far to feature Jean-Claude Van Damme in a dual role as identical twins. (That there's actually a choice in the matter is, however preposterous, secondary.) It transcends both Double Impact and Maximum Risk (from the same director as Replicant, Ringo Lam) by way of the butt-plugged Michael Rooker--who, like a human magnet, enters the story trailing pieces of his films Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and The 6^th Day behind--and an irresistibly dopey ending. (It seems sentimental until you dwell on the particulars.) What am I saying? The whole trying affair is irresistibly dopey. Kinetic, too.

Like much of Lam's work, Replicant has it in for innocents. The film opens with a long-haired Van Damme finishing off his brutal beating of a young mother (with her little boy watching) and then setting fire to the place, leaving the kid to fry. Rooker's Jake Riley, a police detective "retired from the force as of one hour ago," leads a team to the woman's apartment, rescues the child, pursues Van Damme down a fire escape and onto the street, and becomes embroiled in a foot-car chase with the man we'll soon learn is a serial killer of pretty single-moms. And how do you stop such a monster from striking again after losing him in a parking lot? Not the first thing that came to my mind, but apparently: you sample his DNA; Miracle-Gro a clone; teach the clone gymnastics (though not, apparently, any other skill); and hope that a combination of "genetic memory" and psychic harmony will motivate the replicant to seek out his progenitor. For the record, I would've just hired Will Graham.

Replicant's formula trash plot is easier to grasp than its inscrutable character motivations are. National Security recruits Jake to babysit the clone, then meets with him nightly to criticize the job he's doing of it. Jake, desperate to catch the criminal who got away, is all too eager to give back the clone each and every time this happens, and he is livid to find out that National Security knows sketchy details of his past and present. (Yeah, not normally like the government to run a background check on potential secret agents.) Replicant himself is selectively intelligent: in a shameless Edward Scissorhands rip-off, he bumps his face trying to look beyond a car window, yet he manages to elude Rooker, purposefully and with ease, on more than one occasion.

Lam is drawn to convoluted stories, although he hasn't a gift for telling them; perhaps he is hoping that practice will one day make perfect. His talents lie in the action sequence--he can get you from a fisticuffs in hospital cold storage to an ambulance chase in the basement parking lot without breaking a sweat or momentum. That he still hasn't sought the assistance of a computer in realizing his mayhem brings credibility to every smash-up--and unlike a few of his Hong Kong contemporaries, he doesn't trick up the energy with slo-mo or gimmicky points of view. He's hardcore.

Did I mention that Van Damme does the splits again? Bravo.

Artisan's DVD release of Replicant is better than your average straight-to-video entry; bear in mind that the film came out theatrically abroad. The 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is impeccable--I made note of a bandage that Evil Van Damme wears whose texture can be minutely observed. Edge-enhancement is not an issue in all of this, though colours tend towards muted. The Dolby Digital 5.1 track is more than serviceable, while the LFE rarely lets up. As the menus, in 5.1 as well, are more aggro and encompassing than anything in the film, they might enthrall in a demo situation.

"Special Features" for the disc include a film-length commentary intercutting Van Damme, who merely narrates, and Rooker, less pent-up than his onscreen persona--even genial. Rooker doesn't say much of note, really, but it was nice of him to deliver honest-to-God information about technical advisors, personal assistants, Lam's technique, and whatnot. A section of eight deleted scenes rounds out the backstory for Rooker's character and sees Van Damme performing a gag that Kevin Spacey will soon repeat in K-Pax. (It also presents a hokier ending than the official one.) Step-frame storyboards, the majority for the clone's hatching, plus cast and crew bios and a 'redband' trailer finish off this informal SE.-Bill Chambers

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DVD VITALS:
Running Time
100 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
1.85:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
English Dolby Surround
CC
Yes
Subtitles
Spanish
DVD-9
Region One
Artisan

the critic

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Published: October 16, 2001