Tagline
One packs a punch. One packs a Piece. Together they deliver.
Entire Story in Fewer Words Than Are in This Sentence
What could possibly be better than one JCVD?
Homoeroticism
Would getting it on with your clone really make you gay? Well, what about an identical twin? Well, what if the guy isn’t your identical twin, but you always wished you were JCVD, and so this particular guy would be the identical twin of your ideal self? The pic above says it all. “OK!” Or is that, “see if you can shoot it through here and still hit my face?” For the less philosophically, but otherwise similarly inclined, there’s still plenty of red meat.
The beginning of the film centers around the JCVD as a preppy, splits-doing aerobics instructor who wears stretch pants and a tank top with spaghetti straps. It’s the only thing “top” about him. The only colors in his wardrobe are pastels, mainly pink and blue. No wonder then, that his first words upon landing in Hong Kong are, “let’s go shopping!”
This JCVD is a bottom, tailor made for his rugged, domineering brother. Unfortunately, there’s a blond who looks kind of like Kim Basinger. She goes nude and gets a rogering from the preppy JCVD in a scene that looks incredibly phony. Maybe that is because it only happens in the jealous imaginings of the butch JCVD, who clearly has a hard time visualizing what heterosexual sex would be like. Such a transgression, while dire, doesn’t require that the woman die. Still, she must literally be bitch slapped aside to make way for the brothers’ violent embrace. She is continually roughed up from that point, until the end of the film and has hopefully learned that Brussels is the real city of brotherly love.
Corpse Count
Like 35. I wrote my notes for the first part in The Portable Machiavelli , which I think I left at work.
Was Bolo in It?
Oh, yes. He gets shot in the face trying to murder the infant JCVD and returns with a cat’s eye and facial scars that I am going to have replicated on my own face… by a Jewish, cosmetic surgeon who’s loose with the scrips. Bolo rips off a JCVD’s shirt, then his own, then flexes down. Then, it’s on like Donkey Kong. But only in the sense that Bolo begins lifting barrels over his head and throwing them at the JCVD who dodges them until he gets close enough to gradually spin kick Bolo into a fuse box and electrocute him, which causes a little trail of fire that ignites the barrels and blows up Bolo’s corpse.
Novelty Death
Bolo is only one of many contenders. There’s the guy who gets flipped over in a judo throw and into a neck snap. The guy who gets his neck snapped in a thigh lock. The hulking lesbian who tries to snap a JCVDs neck with a thigh lock but gets stabbed. But we know the best is to come when the JCVDs have split up to chase down the head bosses while the film cuts back and forth as they scream the last names of the bosses they are chasing. Zaaaaanng! / Grrriiifiiiiiiitth! / Zaaaaang! / Grrriiifiiiiitth!
Mendooozazaaaaa!
Zang takes the prize though, because the JCVD beats on him, then forces his hand through some giant gears, leaving him with a bunch of pastrami hanging out of his sleeve. In a novel twist, Zang begs for his life and promises to make JCVD rich in exchange for mercy, before being hurled hundreds of feet to his screaming death.
How bad is it really?
Um… are you actually insane? Are you reading this in a mental hospital? It’s a movie about identical twin JCVDs! There’s a reasonable budget here and the movie magic that allows for a JCVD to fight another JCVD is breathtaking. 80’s Action aficionados know that JCVD does not, in fact, have an identical twin. But somehow the twins portrayed by JCVD not only fight, but converse as JCVD maintains two entirely different characters: an uptight preppy kickboxer out for revenge, and a hard drinking, shady kickboxer out for revenge. And, again, Bolo is in it.
Stupid Political Content
Nada. No matter how much I pervert the content of the film, no politics come out. So here’s an 80’s Action related political image.