Knock Off

Friday, March 14, 2008
"Holy Shit, Did That Really Happen?!" Sober Re-Watching: Saturday, March 15, 2008

I still am having a little trouble believing that this movie exists. Patrick and I watched this while rather intoxicated on Friday night, and I actually had to re-watch it on Saturday morning to convince myself that it was for real.

This is either one of the worst action films ever, or it's a brilliant, subversive work of absurdist humor masked as an action movie. I'm not sure which. All I know is that it was described by renowned internet film critic Vern as surrealism, and he wasn't kidding.

It's about knockoff designer clothing that has been fitted with tiny, button sized bombs to kill the wearer. It stars Jean Claude Van Damme as a fashion designer caught up in the intrigue, and Rob Schneider plays his sidekick/undercover CIA agent. Paul Sorvino is the villain. There is a scene where the camera travels through the wall an into a secret chamber of surveillence people, into the back of their monitor, close up into the circuity to the image (which we see in reverse) and out the screen and right up to the eyes of the man watching. There is another scene where we see a foot going into a shoe shot from the POV of the foot.

This is maybe the strangest, silliest action movie ever made, and holy shit am I glad I paid $3 for it because I will definitely watch it again. And now I want to see Van Damme's Double Team, made by the same director as this.

OK, this movie is pretty crazy, but it never tops the opening action scene. Van Damme runs around Hong Kong carrying Rob Schneider in a rickshaw in some sort of charity race. One of their opponents is some weird, deformed little person who likes to talk shit in Chinese. At one point, a car almost hits JCVD, but he jumps in the air (still holding the rickshaw) and runs across the side of the car. Later, he runs so fast that his knockoff sneakers explode, which is shown to the audience in extreme closeup of the tearing rubber. Also, Rob Schneider steals an eel from a market and begins whipping Van Damme in the ass with it to make him go faster. An eel. I swear, this could be a Salvador Dali painting.

The movie doesn't maintain this level of ludicrousness for its entire running time, but it still has a lot of moments. If you have any interests in weird, cult movies, this one gets a high recommendation.