Jake(Rooker, enjoyable to watch as usual) is a cop, obsessed with a serial killer(Van Damme, who, like we see in The Expendables 2, is a much better villain than hero), Torch(so named because of his MO... he uses a knife. ...OK, yeah, it's fire, obviously), who in turn stalks him, because films like Se7en made money. Government agents have the latter cloned(no, no, wait! It... it gets even better!), since they were going to hunt down terrorists like that(!), and, as we all know, "genetics carry memories"(I *told* you! Didn't I?). The best part about the latter is that it's just... slung out there(accompanied by the words "science has proved", which I think is one of those sayings that people use when they know that it just ain't so, like "no offense"). It's like they have it said out loud just to see if it gets any stupider like that, if it gets worse than it looks on the page of the screenplay. How is this going to help? ...who said it would, they just wanted two of him, like in Double Impact(it took a decade to forget why it was so wrong the first time). No, I'm kidding. There's a psychic link between the two. Duh! At this point in reading this, I can only imagine you're bleeding from the ear from the concentrated idiocy of the core concept, so let's not dwell on that any longer. The titular Replicant(yes, yes, that's... very cute, you watched Blade Runner, we get it) is like a child(or possibly even less mentally adept... perhaps that's just JCVD's vacant expression... to be fair, he does well in this role, as well, and the shift between the two is seamless), and our other lead has to take care of him, and this is where it gets interesting, as there is a mirroring, and the nature vs. nurture debate is handled, without being preachy(not that it's entirely subtle, either). Acting is decent. The action is OK, though it barely really needed to be the Belgian Karate champ in the dual role - he gets to do some of those kicks we like to see, sure, but that seems like the afterthought, as he mostly doesn't go up against anyone skillful(he's mostly taking on regular people... and for some reason, he at one point uses a vacuum cleaner as a weapon... no, really). Who looks at him and thinks "mass murderer"? At best, it is quite tense and fast-paced, such as the climax and at least one of the chases. It goes for usual genre clichés(even the relatively recent one of "unmotivated personal endangerment by supposedly professional protagonist"), and we get a one-liner or two that are as dumb as they are uninspired. Ringo Lam, who also helmed Maximum Risk, directs this(and gets us into it, at times, using excitement to distract from... well, scroll back up and see it again, if you've regained your senses and blocked it out), presumably because he was disappointed that his last "two of Jean-Claude" flick didn't have them both featured, and alive, at the same time(on that, while the majority of the tricks to make it look like there's two of him are as unconvincing as his usual performance, there are several effective bits). There is some moderate to strong language, bloody violence and disturbing content as well as a little sexuality(no nudity, and mostly audio) in this. I recommend this to fans of its stars. 5/10
Review of Replicant
