{"id":2206,"date":"2024-08-09T13:57:45","date_gmt":"2024-08-09T13:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2206"},"modified":"2024-10-14T13:26:20","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T17:26:20","slug":"knock-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/09\/knock-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Knock Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Knock Off <\/strong>(1998)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TriStar\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (continuous violence, brief language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Tsui Hark\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Steven E. de Souza\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Ron Mael and Russell Mael\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Arthur Wong\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 4, 1998 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Rob Schneider, Lela Rochon, Paul Sorvino, Michael Fitzgerald Wong, Carman Lee, Wyman Wong, Glen Chin.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $10.3M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s almost impossible to surprise me when it comes to movies. I\u2019ve literally seen thousands of them. There isn\u2019t much I haven\u2019t seen or heard before. Nevertheless, I got the surprise of my life when I rewatched the JCVD actioner Knock Off<\/strong> the other night. Specifically, I was surprised to see it\u2019s not as awful as I remember it being. It\u2019s bad alright, but not bad enough to be in my top ten worst movies where it\u2019s been since its premiere in September \u201998. I HATED it at the time. It\u2019s an incomprehensible mess that doesn\u2019t make a lick of sense at any point. The pairing of JCVD and Rob Schneider (Deuce Bigalow) is hardly what I\u2019d call inspired. The crazy camerawork gives it a strange surreal feeling. I don\u2019t know what Tsui Hark was thinking when he made Knock Off<\/strong>, but it has to be a joke, right? Surely he can\u2019t be serious.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I can\u2019t describe what I don\u2019t understand, so I\u2019ll just tell you the plot of Knock Off<\/strong> involves the Russian Mafia, the CIA, the Hong Kong police, Chinese gangsters, double agents and miniature bombs hidden in knock-off products like toys and designer jeans. It takes place in \u201997 at the same time the British government is about to hand HK over to the Chinese. At the middle of the muddled plot are Marcus (JCVD) and his partner Tommy (Schneider), a couple of leisure wear dealers who work too closely with shady types like Marcus\u2019 adopted brother Eddie (Wong). Their illegal business activities catch the attention of a few people like jeans company rep Karen (Rochon, Waiting to Exhale) and CIA boss Johansson (Sorvino, Goodfellas). Of course, several characters aren\u2019t who they say they are. Do I really need to continue?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Simply put, Knock Off<\/strong> is a mess. To wit, it\u2019s a great big unwieldy mess that defies explanation, logic, common sense, gravity, all laws of science and everything else you can imagine. It\u2019s loud, frenetic and ultra-artsy with all of Hark\u2019s fancy camera trickery- i.e. blurred shots, stop-motion photography, wild pans and zooms, etc. It\u2019s completely bonkers! NONE of that has changed since \u201998. What has changed is my attitude towards it. I couldn\u2019t help but watch it with a big goofy smile this time. It\u2019s like a live-action cartoon with all the crazy OTT action scenes starting with the illegal rickshaw race through the crowded streets of HK. Boxes of fruit get knocked over in the course of the race, so I guess that counts as the \u201cFRUIT CART!\u201d scene. As JCVD pulls Schneider along, they get mixed up in an attempted kidnapping by Russians and end up crashing a van through the front of a store where a female cop (Lee) arrests them for…. I\u2019m not exactly sure what. It\u2019s just one of many, MANY things in Knock Off<\/strong> that make no sense.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I have to admit the action scenes are well done in an OTT kind of way. They\u2019re wildly overedited to the point of making some viewers dizzy. We get the usual shots of vehicles crashing through walls, angry groups of local hoods chasing our heroes and explosions that are green for some reason. This is in addition to all the fights and chases.<\/p>\n

\u00a0You know, I think it would save a lot of time if I simply said Knock Off<\/strong> is one continuous action scene. That\u2019s how it feels to me anyway. In any event, I\u2019d rather see that than watch JCVD and Schneider try to do the mismatched buddy routine. It doesn\u2019t work. It\u2019s the dumbest pairing since Steven Seagal and Keenan Ivory Wayans in The Glimmer Man. Schneider is an annoying little twerp who deserves a hard roundhouse kick to the head from his co-star. JCVD shows off some of the skill and agility that made him an action star, but still fails to cut it performance-wise. His character Marcus is a crooked businessman trying to go straight. I didn\u2019t buy his performance, not one single bit of it. Rochon isn\u2019t so great (or even good) as a company rep who actually represents another company. Sorvino simply looks embarrassed to be there.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Although I don\u2019t hate Knock Off<\/strong> anymore, I think it\u2019s safe to say it\u2019s still one of the dumbest action movies ever made. Mini-bombs hidden in counterfeit designer jeans? Oh, PUH-LEEZE! I now realize this is what makes Knock Off<\/strong> so much fun. Of course, you have to have your brain in the OFF position while watching it. In any event, I find I can no longer keep it on my bottom ten list. Effective immediately, it\u2019s being transferred to my guilty pleasure list and replaced by Battlefield Earth in my bottom ten.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Knock Off (1998)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 TriStar\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (continuous violence, brief language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Tsui Hark\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Steven E. de Souza\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Ron Mael and Russell Mael\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Arthur Wong\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 4, 1998 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Rob Schneider, Lela Rochon, Paul Sorvino, Michael Fitzgerald Wong, Carman Lee, Wyman Wong, Glen Chin.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guilty-pleasures","category-kick-ass-actioners"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Knock-Off-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2206"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3117,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206\/revisions\/3117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}