You also have to see Van Damme and Rodman skydive while inside of a giant basketball.
Double Team is a crazy movie, but it is not Van Damme or the writers, or even the director who make it crazy. No it is Dennis Rodman. Every scene that he is lifts the movie up out of the Van Damme pit. I don't really care about seeing Van Damme attempting to leave an unknown island while trying to be suffocated underwater. This is standard stuff and I think that Van Damme's ego got in director Tsui Hark's way while directing. Tsui Hark is a prolific producer and director in Hong Kong, and since the 90's were about bringing over the best in Hong Kong directing only to deliver mostly mediocre films, it was Tsui Hark's time with Double Team. Tsui is known for shooting well and delivering on the action. Here, the fight scenes are not very good, even if Sammo Hung was brought in to help with them, and the action scenes fall flat. But there is Rodman, who is not a very good actor, but is a very good sport. He makes fun of himself and uses a lot of basketball puns. In fact, I think that most of his dialogue is basketball puns, but he delivers them with a smile on his face so I can't hold them against him.
Double Team would have benefited from more Rodman and a better uses of Tsui Hark's directing abilities. Tsui would go on to direct one more American movie, the Van Damme classic Knock Off, you know the one with the bombs in the jeans, before going back to Hong Kong and directing the crazy Time and Tide, which should have been the movie that he made here just to show what he could do. If Van Damme hadn't such a huge ego, we might still have Tsui Hark directing here every once in a while. Less Van Damme and more Rodman and you have yourself a winner.
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