Replicant

Jean-Claude Van Damme, already no stranger to inhabiting dual roles within his films, gets to play two extremely different takes on the same man in director Ringo Lam's Replicant. Firstly, as a greasy haired serial killer who beats young mothers to death with twirling kicks, before setting them and their homes on fire. Secondly, as a freshly hatched clone of this murderer, cooked up by the American government and suffering through intense flashbacks of outrages that this photostat man did not commit. Michael Rooker is on-hand as the cop investigating these slayings, forgoing his nautical retirement plans to babysit the childlike version of Van Damme. Despite this copy never having harmed anyone (well, a few irritating G-men aside), Rooker's Detective Riley largely treats the film's second Van Damme horribly: handcuffing him to any stray pipes; pushing and prodding this simple-minded man to stand before bulletin boards teeming with charred bodies; and even battering away at him with the flimsiest of provocation. Although their connection does (eventually) skew in an unconvincingly paternal direction, Riley's first instinct is to seize on this opportunity to bully and browbeat a reduced reproduction of his quarry. That the fully-realised Van Damme character, known as The Torch, seems to be choosing victims based on their willingness to be brusque with their children in public seems to mean something but the faulty parenthood framing is a stray note rather than a full-on symphony. Since this is a Van Damme film, entire sequences revolve around his boyish, Airwalk wearing clone winning the heart of a working girl by prematurely ejaculating in his sweats then beating up her pimp. And, since this is also a Ringo Lam film, we are treated to an all-time demolition derby, featuring Rooker and the evil Van Damme squabbling over a seat belt in an out-of-control ambulance that strikes every single stationary car and light fixture in a multi-story car park.