Double Team

Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dennis Rodman, and Mickey Rourke. Jesus, legendary Hong Kong action director Tsui Hark didn't exactly have much to work with -- or maybe he had too much. Still, Double Team is too goddamn weird to be bad. Sure, the film's dreadful at times, usually when the unbelievably uninteresting Rodman's on screen. But the movie, which begins with a typically over-the-top action sequence, keeps veering more and more to the ridiculous, with some moments genuinely and intentionally amusing. A monastery full of cybermonks, Van Damme showing his best moves to a tiger, and a colony of supposedly dead spies secretly monitoring the world's terrorists certainly don't represent typical dumb action-movie fare. Neither does creative direction, which Hark brings to a sloppy, often dimwitted script. Van Damme, playing a master spy stalking an arch-enemy (Rourke) who's kidnapped his wife and newborn baby, doesn't crack a smile throughout; whether he's in on the jokes is unclear, but he looks like a master thespian next to Rodman. At the Cinema World, the Entertainment Cinemas, the Hoyt 495, Leominster, Natick, and the Worcester Showcase.

-- Mark Bazer