Double Impact

In Van Damme’s sixth installment he takes on a new challenge of playing two different roles in the same film. Van Damme plays twin brothers Chad and Alex Wagner who were separated when they were six months old following the assassination of their parents. Chad is taken by his late father’s personal body guard and close friend Frank Avery, Geoffrey Lewis, who raises Chad like his own son in Paris and then in LA. Alex was taken by his Chinese nanny and dropped off at an orphanage in Honk Kong. Given their dramatically different upbringings they grow to become very different adults. Chad is a privileged play boy who likes shopping and wearing black silk underwear, Alex is hard-nosed thug trying to make his way selling imported cars and other goods on the black market. The two brothers are re-united in Hong Kong when a private investor for Frank finds Alex. Frank hopes to re-unite the brothers and convince them to strike back at the two men responsible for their parent’s death.

In the past I have refrained from mentioning anything about Van Damme’s “acting ability” in the movies I have commented on mostly because these commentaries are intended to evaluate and compare the fighting and action sequences from movie to movie. I would be remise, however, if I didn’t show Mr. Van Damme a little love for pulling this off. He really did play two very different characters in this movie and quite successfully. He even went so far as to change the fighting styles between the two characters. Chad, having the more sophisticated background, utilized more formal fighting stances, most of his moves were the trade mark Van Damme stylized kicks, a lot of roundhouse and jumping roundhouse kicks, plenty of straight kicks as well, he also did not shoot that much. Alex’s fighting style on the other hand was more rough and violent. Alex used a lot of punches and throws, also many of his moves resulted in fatal blows, based on the idea that this is someone that has had to fight to save his own life. Alex was also the one that did most of the shooting in the movies again reflecting their environments. Chad did have to use or get comfortable with guns in his youth, unlike Alex who I am sure was packin at age 8.

While the final fights between the two head villains that were ultimately responsible for their parent’s deaths did not involve a knock down drag out grulling physical fights, they did offer up elaborate death sequences and it gave Van Damme a chance to kill two different bosses two different ways while playing both roles. This set-up actually made for great action movie climax as the two bad guys are fleeing the scene in opposite directions Alex says to Chad (in other words Van Damme is yelling to himself) “Chang is mine, you get Griffith", so the two bad guys split up and the twins split up, that’s called symmetry boy and gilrs, film making 102.

By way of a final word Double Impact also featured Bolo Yeung, incidentally he was 53 years old when he made this movie, who you may remember was Chong Li in Bloodsport, he was 50 when he made that movie. Naturally he and Van Damme face each other a couple of times in this movie including their final scene. One of the things that makes Double Impact such a better action movie than some of his previous films is that Van Damme can actually use martial arts when fighting the main villain. Bolo can take the hits and deliver them as well, versus someone like Patrick Kilpatrick, Sandman from Death Warrant, who is a decent actor, but not a fighter. It is about more than casting people that look the part. There is a significant difference in the quality of action film when there is someone who can actually go toe to toe in a combat sequence versus someone who can only throw right hooks.