Tsui Hark's 1998 Jean-Claude Van Damme/Rob Schneider Cult Buddy Comedy Knock Off Is a Hoot and a Half, If Not Quite as Crazy as it Should Be
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1998’s Knock Off brought together two 1990s action movie trends, one fortuitous and inspired and the other borderline inexplicable.
The fortuitous and inspired action movie trend is of course Jean-Claude Van Damme using his power and leverage as one of the top action heroes in the world to introduce major Hong Kong auteurs like John Woo, Ringo Lam and Tsui Hark to Western audiences with films like Hard Target, Maximum Risk, Double Team and Knock Off.
The other, bewildering trend involved people with the power to green-light movies for tens of millions of dollars looking at violent action blockbusters and thinking, “You know what red-blooded, sensation-crazed action movie die-hards are gonna love? The comedy stylings of Saturday Night Live’s Rob “Makin’ Copies” Schneider! The Schneid-Man! The Rob-O-Rino! Rob, Robby, Rob Rob Robo-Rob-Rob-A-Lodeon! That guy cracks me up! Let’s definitely cast him in a sidekick/co-lead role. Man, this cocaine is amazing! It really makes me feel like I can fly and live forever, and I cannot wait until the Great Gods of Cinema Anoint Rob Schneider the next massive action superstar. ”
Nobody in the world wanted to see Rob Schneider in an action movie. Focus group testing at the time actually illustrated that the prospect of seeing an action movie or action comedy starring Rob Schneider actually made people projectile vomit in disgust.
Yet that somehow did not prevent studios from casting the diminutive anti-vaxxer and Republican in action movie after action movie in violent defiance of the public’s explicit wishes. First there was Surf Ninjas and Demolition Man, then Judge Dredd and finally Knock Off in 1998.
But before Schneider’s performance as Tommy Hendricks takes an unfortunate turn towards the dour and dramatic with the revelation that his gaudily dressed goofball is not a knock-off merchant/fashion designer but rather a CIA agent, the sheer incongruity of Rob Schneider doing his Rob Schneider shtick in a Jean-Claude Van Damme Hong Kong action extravaganza is delightful.
In its uproarious first act at least Knock Off takes its manic, maniacal rhythms from the sweet, sweet cocaine coursing through star Jean-Claude Van Damme’s bloodstream.
Like Double Team, the Jean-Claude Van Damme/Tsui Hark collaboration that immediately preceded it, Knock Off’s greatest strength is that it’s out of its goddamn mind. Its greatest weakness is that it gets less bonkers as it progresses, which is a mistake.
Knock Off begins as a real outlier in Van-Damme’s filmography, a more or less out and out comedy about two lazy goofballs on the make in Hong Kong just before it was returned to China after 156 years of British rule.
In sharp contrast to all of his other vehicles, Knock Off casts Van Damme not as an impossibly athletic man of action but rather a sleazy hustler churning out knock-offs of expensive brand names for a cheap, illegal payday who also happens to be impossibly athletic and great at fighting.
In a bravura bit of anti-exposition, Karen Lee, a woman of mystery played by Lela Rochon, spits out a non-backstory for Van Damme’s Marcus Ray that explains nothing, let alone why a man involved in selling bootleg sneakers has the reflexes and fighting skills of a low-key ninja.
Marcus was the son of two doctors who died (not unlike the unfortunate souls in that Jim Carroll song), leaving him an orphan. He was adopted at ten and then held a series of “meaningless jobs” before hooking up with Tommy Hendricks four years earlier.
That in no way explains the fashion industry hustler’s incredible flexibility and strength but it also helpfully doesn’t explain anything else either.
Like Next, Knock Off has deluded itself into thinking that audiences do not want to see their charismatic star in a kooky, colorful job that requires him to behave like an amiable lunatic. They seem to think that moviegoers want to get through these scenes as quickly and arbitrarily as possible in order to get to what audiences really crave: generic shootouts, chases and fights.
Knock Off introduces Van Damme bopping along happily to a Cantonese pop song while driving a luxury car en route to a fashion show badly run by his effete partner.
When he’s working undercover as a knock-off specialist turned half-assed designer, Schneider is sexually androgynous. During a rickshaw race that is a low-key masterpiece of barely controlled chaos, Schneider whips his partner like a horse and admonishes him to get his “big, beautiful ass” in gear so they don’t lose the big race.
THAT is the Schneider I want to see in Knock Off, a goofball in a wonderfully homoerotic relationship with an unlikely partner who objects to goons touching his “thousand dollar Hawaiian” shirt.
Unfortunately once his real identity is revealed, Schneider becomes rigidly heterosexual and a lot less interesting. The same is true of Van Damme. When he’s sleazing his way around Hong Kong and trying to steer clear of disapproving authority figures, Van Damme’s performance is loose , limber and enormous fun.
That changes when his character discovers that his best friend and partner is in fact a CIA agent who has been using him for years. This understandably creates a rift in their relationship although all it really takes is a very brief brooding montage for Marcus to forgive his partner for living a lie.
I love watching Jean-Claude Van Damme beat bad guys up but I can pretty much watch every movie he’s ever made to see that. What sets Knock Off apart is that it embraces the goofiness and campy humor at the heart of the action icon’s larger than life persona before it unwisely decides to play things relatively straight.
Knock Off’s sly and surprising first act promises more than it can ultimately deliver. Unlike Double Team, which concludes with an epic symphony of cinematic insanity, this action comedy peaks early, when it still tilts heavily towards the comedy side of the action-comedy equation.
But if Hark’s movie begins much stronger than it ends it won me over ultimately by lasting a mere eighty-five minutes, with six minutes of credits, and by concluding with a banger of a theme song by Sparks, who also did the music.
It’s an insanely catchy tune that’s also, not coincidentally, funny and goofy and silly like the film’s best moments. Sparks know exactly what tone the film should strike and strike it in their infectious title song.
Knock Off is crazy and a lot of fun but not quite as much fun as it would be if it were even crazier.
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