A Life Through Film #033: Maximum Risk
Or: The Curious Adventures of JCVD, Part 2
Release Date: 9/13/1996
Weeks at Number One: 1
Thanks for reading! This is my ongoing series where I track the evolution of American culture in my life by reviewing every number one film at the weekend box office since I was born in chronological order. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading my introduction post here, and be sure to like and share the review if you enjoyed it!
That’s right, it’s been one virtual year of “A Life Through Film”! From To Wong Foo to now, we’ve examined a whole calendar of box office toppers. I can think of no better reason to return to the topic of one of my favorite curiosities in this column.
When last we checked in with our boy Jean-Claude Van Damme, things weren’t going great for the action star. Sure, his directorial debut The Quest had topped the US box office for a weekend, but the overall domestic takeaway from that film was poor. Despite the international release making the film at least a little bit profitable, Universal Studios were not impressed. With the completion of their three picture deal with JCVD, the suits opted to not sign him on for more. The martial arts star, still in the throes of a $10,000 a week cocaine addiction, needed to bounce back, and fast.
But the Muscles from Brussels wasn’t without hope. After all, he was still a decently bankable action star. Soon enough, he found a new home with Sony Pictures through their Columbia subsidiary, but neither he nor the studio wanted to repeat the flop era of his last couple of Universal movies. It was time to return to safer, more familiar bets; no more strange video game adaptations or self-directed epics shot on location in Southeast Asia. Thankfully, even less than a decade into his career as a leading action star, Van Damme had plenty in his back catalogue to draw on for inspiration.
Van Damme had proven himself multiple times to be an effective action star for non-American directors to work with when coming to Hollywood to make their first American features. 1992’s Universal Soldier[3.5/5] had been Roland Emmerich’s first movie after leaving Europe, while ‘93’s Hard Target [3.5/5] served as the initial foray of Hong Kong legend John Woo into western filmmaking. Both had been big hits, and both directors had gone on to further success just in 1996 alone. That was the winning formula. This new project, then, would call for a talented foreign director who had never made an American film before.
As for the concept? That was an easy one: JCVD had played twins before to relative success. There’s no rule that says he couldn’t do it again.
Maximum Risk is a 1996 action title starring JCVD and Natasha Henstridge, directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Ringo Lam. The movie follows Alain Moreau (Van Damme), a French detective who learns he has an identical twin brother named Mikhail when he turns up dead in Moreau’s hometown. From there, the story spirals through the mystery of who Mikhail was, and how his upbringing in the New York Russian mob led him to dying so close to the brother he never met. This journey, of course, requires a lot of ass to be kicked.
A movie’s legacy can be predicated on many different factors. Independence Day was a massive success when it was released and has lived on in pop culture as emblematic of its time. The Island of Dr. Moreau was such a disaster that examining the fallout of its production has led to scores of video essays on YouTube and even a full length documentary. Even something like The Craft found its cult niche through the years, leading to plenty of retrospectives and interviews with its cast and crew. No one, however, spares a thought for the many mediocre action movies that come out in a given year.
Almost 100% of the movies that I have found hardest to research for this column have been middling action flicks that haven’t really lived on past a minor initial burst of public interest. Broken Arrow, Eraser, and now, the hardest of them all, Maximum Risk. Unfortunately, this makes sense. The best movies in the genre are built on unique spectacle and memorably macho charisma. Without those elements, why rewatch or reconsider one of these films at all? I’ll give you everything I’ve gathered about this oft-forgotten final box office topper starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, but it’s not a movie that has much history or presence online.
We’ll start with that director. Ringo Lam came from the same rough and tumble world of Hong Kong action movies as John Woo and Jackie Chan, but he was able to carve his own distinct niche into the space. Though Lam’s work was filled with the violent action you’d expect, his movies were also interested in examining the kinship between criminals and the human elements that connect across the line of right and wrong. Van Damme himself called Lam “the Scorcese of Asia.”
Honestly, I can see where he’s coming from based on the one Lam movie I watched from his pre-Maximum Risk era of work. His most famous film remains 1987’s City on Fire [3/5], a crime thriller which offered more than a little inspiration to Quentin Tarantino’s debut feature Reservoir Dogs [4/5]. The American director was upfront with what I’ll call his creative borrowing from Lam’s movie though, pushing the Hong Kong director to greater acclaim in the United States. The hottest new director in town’s openness about pulling from City on Fire was fully for the sake of praising Lam’s work. Soon enough, Hollywood came calling.
There’s a big reason why directors like Lam and Woo were eager to move from Hong Kong to America, and it wasn’t just the potential for more pay and higher budget projects. July 1st, 1997, the day that the British government would hand control of Hong Kong back to mainland China, was rapidly approaching.
Filmmakers who had enjoyed decades of creative freedom as part of the British system were concerned that CCP oversight on their film industry would totally change the way they could even make movies. Ultimately, they were right to be concerned; the local film industry was already facing a number of setbacks in the ‘90s such as lower ticket sales and a SARS outbreak, and the handoff of Hong Kong to China and its government oversight on all produced scripts did not make things easier.
When Lam got the call from Sony that Van Damme wanted him to direct his new feature, he was thrilled. But what would this new movie even be?
Like I said, it’s tough to get a clear timeline here, but at some point Columbia got their hands on an action script called The Exchange. I don’t know what this original version of the script looked like or necessarily who even wrote it, but the studio must have seen the kernel of a good idea in it. They just needed to get the right writers on it. And their choice for Mr. and Mr. Right was extremely odd.
Of all people, future co-creators of the Scary Movie franchise Jason Friedberg and Adam Seltzer, early in their movie writing career, were brought in to do a page-one rewrite of the script. Given their later work, you may expect that these two were brought in to make the movie funnier, but Friedberg and Seltzer were actually known to Columbia as action guys, since the studio had bought a thrilling script of theirs called The Bridge (which ultimately went unmade).
In one of their first jobs in the industry, the future kings of annoying film parody wrote what they called a “hard-core cop movie,” a script so good that it got the movie greenlit. However, as we've learned in this column before, screenwriting credit was a nebulous thing in the ‘90s. Friedberg & Seltzer’s screenplay was handed off to “million-dollar-a-week writers” who turned out a “chop-sock sort of Van Damme movie.” The final screenplay was a full rewrite of the duo’s work and is credited to Larry Ferguson, an action screenwriter known for movies like Highlander, The Hunt for Red October [3.5/5], and Alien3 [2.5/5]. Whether he was the original screenwriter of The Exchange or one of the “million-dollar-a-week” guys, Ferguson gets the final credit.
I wonder when it was during this whole process that the twin thing got introduced into the script, because that seems like something that was specifically inspired by JCVD. He had played identical twins before in 1991’s Double Impact, a dual role that pushed his acting ability to surprisingly decent results [3/5]. That one made decent money at the box office but lived on more as a video rental favorite in the years after its release, probably due to the novelty of an action star like Van Damme fighting himself thanks to the power of movie magic.
So Van Damme had a new studio deal and a winning pair of past motifs from an earlier phase of his career. This, dear readers, is where all verifiable production history of Maximum Risk that I could find ended. I’m sure trade publications and newspapers at the time covered the movie as it was being shot in France and New York, but if those reports have been digitized they are impossible to find through my normal research methods. That then forces us to talk about the movie itself a bit earlier in these reviews than normal, but I’m alright with that.
Believe it or not, for a movie no one cares to remember existed, Maximum Risk ain’t bad folks.
That is, unless you’re a Parent Trap stan who can’t get enough of actors playing their own twin; if you are you may feel a bit scammed by this one. While Van Damme plays both Alain and Mikhail, the latter dies as a result of the initial action scene, meaning that there’s never any need for JCVD to portray both men within the same shot (nor for the movie to justify why two twins separated at birth and raised an ocean apart have the same French accent). Instead, Mikhail looms over the film as an enigma, a mysterious figure whose history and motivations drive his brother to infiltrate the dangerous world of the Russian mob in New York.
I’ve been dismissive of Van Damme’s acting ability in the past, and occasionally that’s for good reason. Maybe I’ve watched too many movies from the guy’s prime era, but I’ve actually come around on most of his performances. Even if he was never going to win an Oscar for his work, JCVD is strangely compelling and even charming when he wants to be. Maximum Risk isn’t the most obvious example of this in action, but he’s definitely better here than he was in The Quest.
Granted, less is asked of Jean-Claude’s acting ability here; the stoic Belgian was simply born to play the role of a stoic Frenchman. But while the more emotional moments of Maximum Risk, like a tear-jerking confrontation between Alain and his mother early on, fall flat, they are the minority of the overall film. Van Damme is asked to look intimidating and believably seem like someone who could kick all sorts of ass, and he does it. He lacks the overall charm that he had in Double Impact, but he clearly cares more about his performance here than he did in Street Fighter [unironically a 1.5/5, ironically a 4.5/5].
It helps that the mystery around Mikhail is a solid setup for the movie’s plot. Who was he? What circumstances led him to being born and killed in the same French town after a life spent in the Russian mob? As mysterious figures continue to follow Alain while he investigates his brother’s life, the conspiratorial nature of Maximum Risk’s story continues to ratchet up the tension further and further.
Revelations in the second half don’t live up to the expectations the movie set up for itself though, leading to a narrative that feels unnecessarily simple to accommodate the action. The movie just never takes the risk (ha) of jumping to some of the weirder, darker places that its plot setup could have taken it. City on Fire wasn’t afraid to get bleak and unsettling, but Lam either wouldn’t or couldn’t bring that same energy to his Hollywood debut.
The action is pretty sweet though. Maximum Risk is filled with interesting set pieces from the jump. The movie starts with a killer chase scene that shows JCVD at his best: on the back foot, desperate, and not just a lucky roundhouse kick away from victory. Later action highlights, like very memorable scenes in a burning law office, a Russian sweat lodge, and a bank elevator, honestly don’t feel too out of line with what you might see in one of the first couple of John Wick movies. These unique settings force Lam and Van Damme to experiment with fight structures more, leading to more interesting firefights and martial arts showdowns.
There’s one moment in this movie I’ve been turning over in my head since I watched it. Towards the end of the film, JCVD’s powers as a cop are fully unlocked and he gets access to his signature Desert Eagle. His first use of it leads to possibly the coolest headshot I’ve ever seen in an action film. The zoom along the bullet’s perspective, the guitar squeal, the insane sound effect boosting for when Van Damme cocks the gun. As someone who doesn’t thinks dangerous guns belong in a modern society, I unfortunately think that this presentation is dope as fuck.
The stuff between all the action is real hit or miss. A lot of the supporting actors, filling out roles within the Russian mob or a corrupt cadre of FBI agents, are decent if a bit indistinct. But the two leads aren’t exactly a compelling pair to carry a movie.
Canadian actress Natasha Henstridge plays the female lead opposite Van Damme, just a year after her feature film debut in the cult sci-fi horror flick Species. That was a role that relied on Henstridge being extremely beautiful and willing to get naked on camera, not on her being a great actor. Those same qualifications of hers apply to Maximum Risk as well, meaning that unfortunately large parts of the movie solely star the two worst dramatic performers in the movie, poorly conveying the tension of the plot’s mystery.
I do enjoy this movie overall, but it’s more shlocky ‘90s action from a guy who by this point had made a full career’s worth of that. This isn’t Van Damme’s worst movie by a mile, but it’s also not his best. It lacks the balls to the wall fun of Hard Target, the surprising pathos of Universal Soldier, or the camp appeal of Street Fighter. JCVD played it safe with this one, and while the results were better than his other 1996 output, Maximum Risk isn’t the kind of movie that can pull a career out of a commercial slide that’s rapidly increasing in declivity.
I think Maximum Risk is better than its 35% on Rotten Tomatoes implies, but not by much. Joey O’Bryan somewhat unfairly dumps on Van Damme and Henstridge in his review, implying that they drag down what would otherwise be a good Ringo Lam venture:
The “Muscles From Brussels” is as wooden as ever, and his co-star, model-turned-actress Natasha Henstridge…matches his every emotionless expression with one her own, although it must be noted that her thankless “love interest” role gives her precious little to do but pout and disrobe. Thank God Lam manages to infuse the whole affair with at least a little of his moody style.
Weirdly, Lawrence Van Gelder from The New York Times was really into this one, saying that “Van Damme is first and foremost a beneficiary of the directing talent of Ringo Lam, whose scorched-earth, mashed-car, pull-no-punch approach to action typifies the Hong Kong school of film making.” That might be a bit too nice, but I’m glad there were major critics at the time willing to take dumb action movies like Maximum Risk at their level and not decry the genre itself as beneath them.
Maximum Risk holds the distinction of being the lowest grossing movie of 1996 to still top the weekend box office, thanks to a paltry take of $5.6 million that first weekend. It had exceptionally weak competition, but absolutely no one was going to the movies in mid September. Columbia really lucked out that people were not returning to the theater in droves for repeat viewings of Jack, Bulletproof, or The Crow: City of Angels. The only movie with any legs at that point in 1996 was Tin Cup, and Dad can only pick what movie to see at the theater so many times before the kids get mad.
Interestingly, the biggest threat to Maximum Risk that first weekend was Fly Away Home, ANOTHER Columbia release that came in second place (I haven’t watched that movie in over 20 years so I don’t feel comfortable rating it, but my sister loves it so much that she and my Dad danced to it’s beautiful main theme at her wedding).
The commercial falloff for Maximum Risk was steep. After three weeks, it was making less than $1 million at the weekend box office. After 5 weeks, it was gone entirely from theaters, with a pathetic domestic gross of only $14 million. Once again, Van Damme’s international appeal led to a decent overseas take of $37 million, leading to the $25 million movie making a profit. But if I’m an executive at Sony at the end of 1996, I’m wondering what we’re doing giving so much money to a guy who can barely draw a dime in America.
Instead, the actual executives decided to entrust Van Damme with shepherding a controversial athlete into the world of action movies. 1997’s Double Team stars JCVD and (sigh) NBA star Dennis Rodman as a pair of spies trying to save the world from a villainous Mickey Rourke. Personally, I would have picked someone who wasn’t known for his inability to convey drama or in the desperate struggles of a five-figure coke addiction to show Rodman the acting ropes, but what do I know? I don’t run Columbia Pictures.
Believe it or not, Double Team sucks. JCVD is fully in “I don’t care” mode, and Dennis Rodman is worse than a bad actor, he’s an unlikeable one too. The effects are bad, the big action scenes are confusingly put together, and the plot is too batshit for its own good. Double Team is a pretty notoriously bad movie for fans in the know, and it deserves the plethora of Razzies that it won at the end of ‘97 [1.5/5 from me].
Maybe the poor quality would have been excused if people had actually gone and seen it, but Double Team was basically the last straw for Van Damme’s career. It made $11 million at the domestic box office, and that was that. From then on, JCVD was no longer enough of a box office draw to warrant movies with full theatrical releases. He would spend over a decade on the straight-to-video circuit. Jean-Claude was basically always working, but by Y2k, his career as a top action star was in the past-tense.
Meanwhile, Van Damme’s personal life spiraled. He tried to go to rehab and failed. He was arrested for drunk driving and got into fights. Divorces, remarriages, and lawsuits abounded as his movies made less and less money. In 1998, a suicidal JCVD was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and sought treatment for his condition. He finally quit the drugs cold turkey, but that didn’t turn his career around. Years down the line, Van Damme will appear again in this column, but as a voice cameo or side character in larger releases. The middle of September 1996 didn’t just mark my first birthday, it marked the end of the Jean-Claude Van Damme era.
I will say, you know who’s been there for JCVD as a frequent collaborator on many of his low budget direct-to-DVD releases? Ringo Lam. I find that loyalty weirdly touching, and I’m sure both men appreciate both it and the recurring work that the other is able to keep providing.
Why do I find Van Damme so compelling that he was my most watched actor of 2024 according to Letterboxd? Many of his best movies are just okay, with only a few standout highlights that I’d recommend to basically anybody. Maybe I’m just wrapped up in his narrative. A European immigrant coming to America with no history of acting or fluency in English becoming a major star because of his sheer physical talents could describe either Van Damme or the more obvious success story, Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a sense, JCVD acts as a sort of mirror case to Arnie, where the difference in their career arcs were based simply in terms of luck, opportunity, and timing. Could JCVD have been the Terminator if he had met James Cameron in the late ‘80s? Could he have been elected Governor?
Unlike Schwarzenegger, who has a small but mighty roster of truly classic movies, Van Damme was an actor better suited for iconic moments. He doesn’t have a Terminator 2 [5/5] or a Predator. Instead, JCVD has the final battle of Blood Sport [3/5], that time he punched a snake in Hard Target, and all those times he hit the splits and showed his ass. These scenes and clips live on more than any of his full films, especially through the ironic lens of podcasts like How Did This Get Made?
These bits and bobs from his career have turned the guy into something of a meme, to the point where one of the most high profile moments of Van Damme’s career in the 21st century was the time he leaned into the joke and did the splits between two trucks for a Volvo commercial. But we can’t ever have purely good things, can we? Van Damme recently admitted to the stunt being faked, so who knows what value there is in it.
I’m still not sure if my fondness for JCVD is ironic or not, but I know I love talking about him and all the different ways his movies tried to justify his French accent. Maximum Risk isn’t the greatest way for his time on top of the action world to end, but it’s a fun enough movie for fans who are fully bought in on the Muscles from Brussels.
Happy first birthday, tiny Will.
Rating: 3/5
Next Week: No new movie next week! Instead, we’ll be looking back at the first virtual year of the column and going over the trends and rising stars of the movie industry from September ‘95 to September ‘96. We’ll also rank the Top 3 and Bottom 3 movies of the calendar year and see if we can use them to figure anything out about American culture.
See you then!
-Will