he final assignment for CIA Special Agent Jack Paul Quinn (Jean-Claude Van Damme), specializing in antiterrorism, is classification Red. 32 kilograms of non-active plutonium has been stolen from a facility outside Croatia, and the suspect, arms dealer and professional killer Stavros (Mickey Rourke), is believed to be selling it to the Iraqis within 24 hours. Intent on returning the heisted goods to a secure U.S. base, Quinn hijacks a truck, crashing it across the walls of a warehouse, flattening cars, and colliding with a tanker (causing a massive fireball), before plowing through a train car while avoiding machine guns and military vehicles. It’s quite the cold open; action very much for the sake of action, and it’s even shown (repeated) from different angles for the full effect.

“Stavros is back. And we want him alive.” Quinn only completes the mission because he believes it’ll be the last one required for retirement – which he manages to enjoy in the south of France for about three years. But he can’t elude the call of the hunt for too long; even with a pregnant wife (Natacha Lindinger) at home, he heads to Antwerp to acquire specialty weapons from all-around acquisitions expert Yaz (Dennis Rodman [“I hope you don’t judge a person by the way he looks”]) before setting up an operation at a public park, where he hopes to tranquilize their target. Of course, this exceptionally dangerous man won’t be so easy to nab.

Directed by Tsui Hark, this is the kind of outrageously over-the-top actioner that racks up the collateral damage, unleashes gunshots and grenades continuously in destructive firefights, and has bodies twirling and twisting in midair as they soak up bullets. Characters also walk away from explosions in slow motion to exhibit their calmness and coolness, or leap through windows in chaotic surprise attacks, while the villains kill indiscriminately, leaving countless bodies in their wakes. It’s very much in the vein of John Woo’s early pictures, boasting nonstop action and violence. And here, “Double Team” is so daring as to rip off “Hard Boiled” with a scene in a nursery full of crying babies (and later, in Rome, there are a suspicious amount of doves flying around).

“With this, I can shoot the dick off a hummingbird.” Featuring an innumerable amount of goofy one-liners (many using cheesy basketball puns), the film proceeds to shift gears into a practically futuristic spy flick, in which Quinn is essentially incarcerated in a hi-tech island facility called The Colony. It’s run by the eerily cheery Alex Goldsmythe (Paul Freeman), and its purpose is to track global terrorism. Everyone stationed there, however, has been proclaimed dead to the outside world; and they’re stuck there forever, monitored extensively and doomed to serve out their lives as think-tank members analyzing world affairs. They’re super-smart spies, working to save the world, but they’re also prisoners.

It’s a weird premise – and one not entirely conducive to adventure. As it transitions into a prison-break scenario, inexplicably having Jack tear apart his bed and other items in his room to craft makeshift gym equipment, while also assembling Rube Goldbergian contraptions to outwit the compound’s state-of-the-art surveillance and security measures, it feels like two separate scripts were forced into an uncomfortable merger. Stranger still is the fact that it takes so long before Yaz reappears to fill his role as the title suggests; nearly half of the movie doesn’t involve a team. And his motivation for participating grows flimsier as each minute passes.

Still, some of the action sequences aren’t half bad. The amount of smashed furniture, shattered glass, and mangled bodies is amusing; the reckless disregard for human lives and property is impressive. And though the reason for the titular pairing is pointless, it’s interesting to see Van Damme changing up the formula of a one-man-army, relying instead on a comedic sidekick of sorts. Unfortunately, the love story is weak; the revenge story is silly; Rourke and Rodman end up shirtless at the climax, but not for a face-off; and for some absolutely nonsensical reason, Jack squares off against a tiger in a minefield. It’s hard to imagine a more absurd arrangement for a finale. This just might be one of the stupidest action movies ever made.

– Mike Massie