Day 4: "Replicant" (2001)

 30 Damme Movies in 30 Damme Days!

The 4th Damme Day:





The Damme movie I chose to view today is JCVD's 2001 sci-fi action movie, "Replicant." This was my first time to watch it.


Two Damme good!  What I mean by that is, JVCD plays a dual role in this movie. We get twice the Damme action and even have scenes of him fighting himself!
In this film, Van Damme plays a deranged serial killer that kills single moms and then burns their bodies.
He has been carrying out these gruesome executions for a few years and Michael Rooker plays a cop that has been trying to catch him the whole time. 
The closest Rooker's character comes to catching him is actually the day that he is retiring from the police force. He fails again though.  A government security force recruits him on the day of his retirement to continue his chase of the serial killer.

They take him to a secret government science lab and introduce him to a top secret project of cloning. Their scientists, using recovered DNA of the serial killer which they got from hair and blood at crime scenes, have made a clone of the serial killer. They plan on having Rooker's character use the clone to track down the serial killer and catch him, because the clone has the killer's memories. This is where JCVD's dual role comes in, playing the serial killer and the clone.
The clone is interesting. It is hatched full grown, the same age as the serial killer. Using the clone's face they are able to feed his image into a database and find out the identification of the serial killer. Rooker has to teach the clone how to talk, think, remember, etc.  The clone is very simple, most people that meet him on the streets think that he is a retarded person. Rooker's character tells them that he is his cousin that is "special" and they all excuse his crude actions.
The best way I can explain how the clone acts is, if you've seen the Jeff Bridges movie "Starman," that's how the clone acts and learns. He's like a brand-new life form experiencing humanity for the first time. Van damme does an excellent job portraying this character.
Throughout the movie, Rooker and JCVD's characters form a bond, almost like brothers.
Something funny about the movie is that the clone learns to fight by bumbling his way through the situations and almost accidently learning martial arts moves. It was almost like watching a Jackie Chan movie with the slapstick moves he pulls off, if you know what I mean.
The acting was very good all the way through the movie. 
I enjoyed this one very much. It was a lot of fun to watch, especially JCVD in the dual role.
I rate it a 6 out of 10.
Check it out and let me know what you think of it. It's on Blu-Ray and several streaming services. I watched it on Prime.

I'll be back tomorrow with another Damme review!

- Patrick


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