Double Team

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Theatrical Trailer(s)	Yes, 1
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	Yes, 1 - Dolby Digital City
Year Released	1997	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	90 minutes	Other Extras	Filmographies
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	4	Director	Tsui Hark
Studio Distributor	Columbia Tristar	Starring	Jean-Claude Van Damme Dennis Rodman Paul Freeman Mickey Rourke
RRP	$34.95	Music	Gary Chang

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	No	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Dolby Digital	5.1
16x9 Enhancement	Yes	Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 ) English (Dolby Digital 5.1) French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
Macrovision	Yes
Subtitles	English French Dutch Arabic

    I had very low expectations when I watched Double Team. How low? Well, on this scale, Money Train is a brilliant and visionary piece of filmmaking. I never thought Godzilla would be surpassed in the mediocrity stakes, but Double Team is worse than Godzilla. This was the most excruciating 90 minutes I have ever had the displeasure of wasting. Sometimes when watching a movie, you just know it is going to be bad. I knew at 1 minute 58 seconds that I was in for a stinker.

    Jack Quinn (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is a counter-terrorist. His enemy is Stavros (Mickey Rourke). Mickey Rourke must really have needed the money, since he should have known better than to appear in this turkey. Stavros thinks he has killed Jack. Not so. You see, when secret agents almost die, they are transported to a secret island where they serve as intelligence consultants. Never mind the fact that their families are told that they were killed, no, these agents are expected to happily serve the government after their "death".

    Naturally, Jack wants to escape and return to his wife who is expecting their child, especially when he figures out that Stavros has his wife and is planning on taking his son. He escapes, naturally, and heads off to see Yaz (Dennis Rodman), the friendly neighbourhood arms dealer. So friendly, in fact, that not only does he give Jack guns on credit, but he goes along and helps Jack with his mission. There's a slight catch, though. Everyone on the island wears a watch and needs to check in periodically. If they don't, an appointed guardian is sent to track them down. No one knows who their guardian is other than it is another agent on the island. Hmmm, this plot device has been used before.

    Finally, Jack faces off against Stavros.

    Let's ignore the dreadful plot completely for a minute. Can something good be found on this DVD? Well, actually, it can. Read on...

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer was razor sharp and crystal clear at all times. Shadow detail was spot on, and there was no low level noise noted at all.

    Colours were perfectly saturated at all times.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. Film-to-video artefacts did not exist. Film artefacts basically did not exist.

    In short, this is another reference quality video transfer from Columbia Tristar.

Audio

    Dialogue was mostly clear, even though it was frequently hard to make out what Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman were saying. This is not the fault of the mix, however.

    There were no audio sync problems. There were quite a few examples of slip-shod ADR work, though.

    The score by Gary Chang is an aggressive pulsating soundtrack, and was frequently present, attempting to help the on-screen action along.

     The surround channels were used virtually continually, filled extremely aggressively with ambience, explosions, gun shots and pulsating music. Everything is way over the top, with massive explosions overloading your senses. There were a number of nice split surround effects. This helped to immerse you into the movie, which was very hard to do given the poor quality of the plot. Now, if this soundtrack was put underneath a good story, well that would be something to see.

    The .1 channel was used almost continuously and very heavily. Explosions rumble, music pounds, gun shots report. The subwoofer get a major workout with this disc.

    If it were not for the minor dialogue problems, I would have given the audio on this disc a reference rating.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

Filmographies

    The video quality is perfect. Reference quality in fact.

    The audio quality is very impressive, with massive amounts of surround information present. Some of the dialogue is very hard to understand, though.

    The extras present are very limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
12th February 1999