High kicks meet high fashion in this explosive thriller starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as a jeans manufacturer in Hong Kong shortly before the 1997 Chinese takeover. When it's learned that the pants contain parts for an international weapons-smuggling scheme, Van Damme teams with wisecracking partner Rob Schneider to shut down the operation. Lela Rochon, Paul Sorvino also star. 91 min. Standard; Soundtracks: English Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital Surround; Subtitles: English; theatrical trailer. NOTE: This Title Is Out Of Print; Limit One Per Customer.

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Hong Kong movies often have impressive stunts and fighting scenes, and the better sort (e.g. Jackie Chan's *Rumble in the Bronx*) sometimes even have good camerawork and photography. What they almost never have, however, is a really good script.

*Knock Off* is precisely the opposite: it was written by one of Hollywood's best action screenwriters, Steven E. de Souza, the author of the first two *Die Hard*, among other classics. De Souza knows what drama is about, and if you try to abstract from what you see to what the original script must originally have looked like, you'll realize that behind *Knock Off* is a really good story involving fake designer jeans, Russian nanobombs, a CIA traitor, Hong Kong cops and enough twists and turns to make a highly entertaining story, livened up by a wacky, tongue-in-cheek attitude reminiscent of the author's *Hudson Hawk*.

However, seeing that might require much more effort than the ordinary movie-goer is capable of, for visually, the movie is completely spoiled by its director, Tsui Hark, who had done a much more decent job on the *Once Upon a Time in China* series. In the making of, actor Michael Fitzgerald Wong says of Tsui Hark that he "loves chaos". As for Tsui Hark himself, he explains he "tried to make the camera as free as possible", so as to give the impression of a "lunatic rushing through everything". This gives you an idea of his style, which is so epileptic and full of mannerisms that the action often becomes virtually incomprehensible, and that it is sometimes hard to understand who is doing what to whom where.

Moreover, the actors obviously lack proper direction, and if Rob Schneider and Paul Sorvino have enough experience to compensate for it, a less trained actor like Van Damme, left to his own devices, becomes a caricature of himself (though, admittedly, this is partly intentional.) Moreover, since the last twenty minutes are just a mindless, uninterrupted Tsui Hark action scene, the film is very likely to leave you with a bad impression, as most of the plot is resolved by the time it begins, and all that is left is for the good guys is to shoot (or blast or crush or dissolve in acid) the bad guys.

In my opinion, *Time Cop* remains Van Damme's best movie to this date. But with a better director, *Knock Off* would not have been far behind. I just hope Hollywood will not blame de Souza for the failure.

(Hong Kong movie-buffs might be interested to know that the second-unit director on this movie was Sammo Hung and that apart from Michael Wong, there's also a small role for Jeff Joseph Wolfe, who played a sympathetic cowboy in the Dr. Wong movie set in America.)

1 of 1 found the following review helpful:

So bad it's good.Jul 17, 2007
By Chad Roberts
First saw this movie on HBO in the late '90's and as a connoisseur of "le bad cinema" I knew I'd found something special. My theory is that when a film is made there are roughly 3 million decision points, encompassing everything like dialog, blocking, acting, lighting, editing, make-up, etc.

A near perfect film (like 'Saving Private Ryan') has made roughly 2.85 million of these decisions correctly, but if you look at this from the other side, then a wonderfully awful film like 'Knock Off' got about 2.85 million of these decisions wrong.

That's what makes truly horrible films so good, you can't intentionally make a film like this (you couldn't consciously make that many decisions incorrect).

So if you appreciate a movie with bad special effects, nonsensical plotting, a character who seems to die 3 different times but keeps coming back with no explanation at all, random zooms that convey no information or emotion...oh and a rickshaw race featuring a pair of imploding shoes, and of course the Laurence Olivier like acting of Jean-Claude Van Damme (he's just too van-damme good) then this is a movie for you.

1 of 1 found the following review helpful:

Perfect title, eh?Oct 02, 2004
By TrezKu13
It's not bad enough this movie is bad...but it tries to be artistic. "Tries" is a choice word, because the director couldn't be artistic to save his life. It looks like every scene was improvised with some cornball idea to make it stylized, so to speak. Most stylized movies keep a certain style, but this movie tries every style in the book, from slow-mo to quick cuts to opening up a seperate window to do an object close-up. This lack of solidarity combined with a script that jumps every where makes me forget what the hell is going on every five minutes like I have short term memory.

And you know, I've often wondered since "Universal Soldier 2" if Jean Claude van Damme was trying to turn himself into a white Jackie Chan. This movie being set in Hong Kong and featuring him doing action stunts involving different props pretty much confirms it.

Really not worth watching. I'm writing this review at three o'clock in the morning and that is a better use of my time than watching this movie.

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