Knock Off

Jean-Claude Van Damme’s career arc is more interesting than all the other action-hero also-rans combined, particularly his ongoing flirtation with the Hong Kong film industry. First teaming up with John Woo for the gloriously overblown Hard Target, the muscles from Brussels proceed to work with Ringo Lam and Tsui Hark, giving both directors a chance to bring their signature style to North American screens. 1998’s Knock Off, his second film with Tsui, is a briskly paced cops and robbers story set in the world of counterfeit merchandising with just enough HK action ingenuity to qualify as legit.

Marcus Ray (Van Damme) is a street-smart straight shooter whose business parter, Tommy (Rob Schneider) turns out to be an undercover CIA agent playing him for connections. But they both get duped by Russian counterfeiters using knock-offs to smuggle microbombs into the U.S. as part of an extortion scheme. That leaves Marcus on the hook to clear his name and avenge his adopted Hong Kong family members with his inexplicably impressive fighting skills.

Inflated ego or no, Van Damme always seemed eager to hitch his wagon to talented filmmakers. And Tsui Hark, who’d been kicking out the jams since Peking Opera Blues in 1986, had more than enough talent to elevate his limited acting ability. Knock Off dispenses with romantic subplots in favor of a buddy comedy vibe, ripping through Die Hard writer Steven E. de Souza’s script in record time but taking surprising advantage of the Hong Kong setting. Things kick off with a kidnapping staged during a rickshaw race, a gunfight on top of a delivery truck and finally your standard shipyard shootout with the participants dodging sliding 2-ton containers while Schneider does the whiny sidekick routine that put food on his table throughout the post-SNL decade.

It’s certainly not art, but it’s aged well. Tsui’s creative camera work and over-caffeinated editing brings out the best in Van Damme’s fight choreography. There’s no slow-motion roundhouse kicks here, just scrappy close quarters fisticuffs that turn Jean-Claude into a human missile, ricocheting through back alleys, factory chutes and slippery wharfs. Almost 30 years later, Knock Off may only be a footnote in the actor’s filmography, but it’s a pleasant reminder of Hollywood’s meet-cute with the Hong Kong film industry…and that Jean-Claude might have been smarter than we gave him credit for.

Part of the MVD Rewind Collection, this 4K UHD / Blu-ray (including HDR-10) combo pack reportedly features an HD restoration from the original camera negative. But there’s an awful lot of speckling in the first 10 minutes or so, perhaps from optical effects and burnt on subtitles. Either way, the clarity improves dramatically as things move on. An archival commentary track, interview and Making Of is included, but there’s also a brand-new 40-minute interview with de Souza that’s an invaluable source of backstory and anecdotes. The slipcover packaging itself plays into the “knock off” theme, mirroring the retro laserdisc graphics of the ‘90s