you've got to think twice before you go see a movie with a title like maximum risk . 
the title is generic . 
it's meaningless . 
and i can't believe it's good business . 
when you pick up the phone and dial 777-film , how in the world are you supposed to remember that the new jean-claude van damme movie , the one that looked kind of cool in the trailers and is directed by some chinese hot shot , is called , geez , maximum risk ? 
yuck . 
the movie itself deserves your attention . 
for sweet bloody thrills , this one beats the summer blockbuster competition hands-down . 
only mission : impossible came close to delivering as skillful a thriller , and i'll give maximum risk the edge simply because it's not as slick as the tom cruise picture , and therefore more gratifying in its execution . 
much to my surprise , van damme continues to develop as a pleasant , unpretentious action hero . 
his track record isn't as solid as schwarzenegger's , but he's a hell of a lot more adventurous than arnold . 
in 1993 , van damme worked with hong kong's premier hardcore action director , john woo , on a fairly lame movie called hard target . 
 ( if you can find a bootleg copy , woo's radically different director's cut is much better than what was eventually released . ) 
this follow-up is directed by ringo lam ( city on fire , full contact ) , whose hong kong films are distinguished action pictures that have consistently played second fiddle to woo's more operatic offerings . 
the surprise here is that maximum risk is a more effective hollywood action flick than either hard target or woo's subsequent broken arrow . 
here's the rundown . 
van damme plays a french cop named alain moreau who is shaken when a policeman friend ( jean-hugues anglade ) finds a corpse that's alain's exact double . 
turns out alain was separated at birth from his twin brother , michael , who has been killed by some russian heavies ( and some strangely american looking cops ) . 
alain does some investigating . 
he finds that michael had booked a flight to new york city , and received a message from someone there named alex bohemia . 
assuming michael's identity , alain flies to new york and gets tangled up with michael's girlfriend ( natasha henstridge ) , the fbi , and the russian mob in little odessa . 
that's as much as you need to know . 
the story is adequate , but not overly involving -- and the major plot points are basically explained to you twice , just in case you go out for popcorn at the wrong moment . 
there's a love story , too , but i didn't find it terribly convincing , partly because ex-model henstridge is too high-strung in her high-profile debut ( she had precious few lines as the alien ice queen in species ) . 
she's great to look at , and she can certainly read a line , but what she does here can't really be described as " acting . " 
of course , " acting " isn't really what she was hired for ( i lost track of whether her shirt comes off more often than van damme's ) . 
the movie is exceptionally violent , bordering on gratuity . 
 ( keep that in mind when planning your date . ) 
the stunts are spectacular , and the fact that you can spot van damme's stand-in makes his work no less impressive . 
there's only so much you can do with a car wreck , but this movie makes crisp , effective use of pile-ups in a handful of frenzied destruction derbies . 
and lam has a surprising , innovative sense of exactly where the camera should go to catch any bit of action . 
the main difference between lam and woo , i believe , is that while woo relies on sheer spectacle to gas up his action show pieces , lam has figured out more about using cinematic space and double-barreled points of view to make things run . 
don't get me wrong -- when chow yun-fat soars through space pumping bullets out of two pistols and chewing on a toothpick with glass and confetti littering the air around him in woo's hard-boiled , it's an amazing moment . 
but it's a moment that's hard to reproduce in hollywood . 
 ( for one thing , hollywood doesn't yet have chow yun-fat ! ) 
while woo's hollywood movies look like the work of a talented upstart , maximum risk is a surprisingly confident picture . 
the very first shot of the film is an awkward overhead view of a chase through the streets of a european city , but lam's use of odd camera angles becomes more efficient later on . 
the film editing is a particularly savvy complement to lam's shooting style , accentuating rather than amplifying the action . 
the performances could have used some fine tuning ( in particular , there's an annoying , overwritten manhattan cab driver in the early scenes who should have been toned down or jettisoned completely ) , and the movie doesn't always overcome the limitations of its genre . 
the story is a little mundane , although there are some effective moments involving van damme's unrequited feelings toward the brother he never knew he had . 
but it's not often that hollywood cranks out a truly satisfying action picture , and it's doubly surprising that this one should come with a mere whisper of publicity . 
van damme fans should treat themselves to what may well be the man's best movie , and international action buffs will no doubt savor this flavorful hong kong/hollywood hybrid .