Replicant (2001)

Replicant (2001)

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Michael Rooker, Catherine Dent, Brandon James Olson, Pam Hyatt, Ian Robison, Marnie Alton
Director: Ringo Lam
Action Director: Martin Zounar, Scott J. Ateah

 

Replicant is a funny film when you think about what it represents. It marks the third time that Ringo Lam made a movie with actors in dual roles [1]. It was the third time that Van Damme starred in a movie where he played dual roles--make that four if you include his present and future selves at the climax of Timecop (1994). It was the second time that Ringo Lam directed a movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme in which the latter plays dual roles. I find it amusing that in the 13 years since Van Damme hit the big time, he had this many dual-role movies under his belt, where it took Steven Seagal theater nearly three decades to do his first--the awful sci-fi thriller The Perfect Weapon (2016).

Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Luc Savard, a serial killer dubbed "The Torch" by the press. The nickname stems from his modus operandi, in which he beats his victim to death with his bare hands before dousing the corpse in inflammable liquid and setting them on fire. His targets are women--specifically mothers--whom The Torch judges to be bad mothers. We open with The Torch executing one of his victims and detective Jake Riley (Michael Rooker, of The Replacement Killers) arriving at the scene. Riley is able to save the victim's toddler before he dies of asphyxiation. Riley gives chase to The Torch and comes close to catching him, but gets run over by a car before he can shoot him down.

Well, that was Jake's last chance of bringing the Torch in: he has retired and decides to spend the rest of his life running a boat repair business. That is, until the NSA shows up and invites him to tour one of their more top-secret facilities. The agency was able to retrieve one of the Torch's hairs from a murder scene some years before. With that hair, they produced a clone (also Van Damme) whom they think might establish a sort of psychic link with the real Torch and lead the authorities to an arrest. While the NSA doesn't deal with local criminals, they think that it will be a good experiment before moving on to terrorists and other more "international" menaces. They want Jake to babysit the Replicant, as he is called, and help him develop the sixth sense that would be necessary to find the real killer.

Jake reluctantly accepts the job and initially sees the Replicant, who still possesses a childlike innocence, as being no better than the real thing. The two gradually come to trust each other as the visit previous crime scenes and the Replicant finds itself with access to his originator's memories. Meanwhile, the Torch eventually figures out what's going on and decides its time to close the book on Jake, his arch-nemesis.

Replicant is one part science fiction movie, one part serial killer thriller, and one part martial arts action flick. That is a lot to digest in a single 100-minute feature. As such, it often feels like each aspect of the film is stepping on the toes of the other two. This goes especially for science fiction movie portion, which glosses over all the questions one might have about the central premise. Accepting the basic Jurassic Park premise of DNA = cloning potential, the movie doesn't really explain how they got an adult clone in two-three years' time. Moreover, the movie is almost Lamarckian in its science, supposing that all of the agility and muscle that the Torch developed through years of training would automatically be inherited by his clone. I call shenanigans on that. The movie does ask if a clone of a psychopath will inevitably become one, although the movie ultimately implies that "nurture" is far more powerful than "nature." 

This movie does get credit for allowing Van Damme to stretch his acting muscles more than any movie he made prior to JCVD. He hadn't played a villain since Black Eagle, so it's interesting to watch him play the sort of serial killer that dominated Hollywood films in the late 90s and early 00s. I actually like Van Damme the villain, especially in the second Expendables movie. He seems a natural at it, especially as he gets older. Better still is his performance as the Replicant, in which Van Damme seems to nail the childlike, borderline mentally challenged, personality of the clone who has only been alive for a few months (or weeks). His scared and confused facial expressions, physical acting, and limited dialog really sell the role. It was nifty watching Van Damme play a character as emotionally vulnerable as the Replicant and kudos goes to both Van Damme and Ringo Lam for directing him that way.

The action was provided by Martin Zounar, a Czech martial artist who worked with Van Damme on both Maximum Risk and Street Fighter. I'm assuming to the two were friends of sorts during the 1990s and early 2000s. The action set pieces include a handful of fights, a well-staged vehicle stunt sequence involving an ambulance, and some pyrotechnics-filled scenes set in burning rooms. The ambulance scene is probably the best action sequence of the film, but the fights are pretty decent. Van Damme's Luc Savard, as we learn later in the film, is an ex-Special Forces operative and fights using basic punches and kicks, plus throws and take downs. The flashiest moves he generally uses are roundhouse kicks--no aerial kicks for Jean Villain here. On the other hand, the Replicant uses a more acrobatic style, as he was raised watching gymnastics videos. So you have a no-frills Van Damme and a borderline Venom Mob Van Damme. I like the contrast. Only in the final fight do they start trading spin kicks as you'd expect in a regular Van Damme movie. These above-average set pieces, on top of an uncharacteristic performance from JCVD, serve to make Replicant worth a view.