“Maximum Risk” is the title you give to a film when you have absolutely no idea what to call it. Considering the film deals with twins, mobsters, crooked FBI agents and a surplus of action, it’s a wonder a less generic title wasn’t devised. Surprisingly, Maximum Risk is quite amusing, and is one of the better made, more entertaining of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s string of 1990’s explosive actioners.

The film opens to an intense chase sequence in the south of France, where Mikhail Suverov is chased down by hordes of heavily armed men. When Mikhail’s luckless escape ends in demise, policeman Alain Moreau (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is called in to examine the body – which shockingly possesses a face identical to his own! After unveiling the fact that Mikhail was his twin brother, Alain assumes the dead man’s identity to locate his killers.

Alain returns to the United States in search of ties to Mikhail’s friends and family – the Russian mafia. Mobster nerves are instantly rattled when Mikhail is seen alive and well, and his gorgeous girlfriend Alex (Natasha Henstridge), who can’t wait to get reacquainted (“Don’t even think about going to sleep – we’ve got a lot of catching up to do”), whisks him away to safety. But Alain isn’t afraid to wield appalling aggression to stop or interrogate those who stand in his way, making him an unusually violent antihero. Without a moment’s peace, guns blaze, knives are brandished, car chases ensue, traitors surface, and shady FBI agents descend upon Alain and Alex, who quickly realize that everyone is out to kill them.

“Parents always lie to their children to prepare them for how they’ll be treated by the government,” explains Sebastien, Alain’s cop friend in France. While the dialogue remains appropriately cheesy, the chases are clearly above standard, the fight sequences are intense and expertly choreographed, and Natasha Henstridge’s nude scene is perfectly placed. Whether demolishing a strip joint, repeatedly wrestling an impossibly large blond henchman (who won’t die hard), careening through New York in stolen vehicles, and fighting in burning buildings and bathhouses, Van Damme proves that although he isn’t much for words (he does manage to apologize when stealing vehicles), he sure knows how to kick ass.

Perhaps the most interesting scene in Maximum Risk is the bathhouse fight, which almost certainly influenced (if only on a subconscious level) Cronenberg’s unbelievable bathhouse skirmish in Eastern Promises. Another moment later on proves to exist just to meet action film quotas - while Alain and Alex are prisoners, instead of plotting their escape, they make time for a steamy love scene. And finally the conclusion spontaneously takes place in a location that can only be described as a throwback to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Although director Ringo Lam made practically nothing else in the U.S. (he hails from Hong Kong), he’s proven that excellent action sequences go a long way to tie together a no-holds-barred adventure film, even if the plot is more or less irrelevant.

- Mike Massie