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. 

Mallrats - Extended Cut

Perhaps test audiences aren't always the unthinking, dim-witted blob they're made out to be? At least in terms of writer-director Kevin Smith's original submission of Mallrats, the terminal impatience of these viewers, who have very likely been tricked into submitting feedback for a movie they don't necessarily even want to see, did yield workable results. In its longer form Smith's second feature opens with Jeremy London's tongue twisted TS accidentally firing a prop musket at New Jersey's sozzled governor, an event that sounds hilarious when you're reading about it on a fan site in the early 2000s but, in practice, has all the vim and vigour of a similar interlude in a latter-day Police Academy sequel. Hazard a listen to this film's cast-and-crew commentary and you'll hear Smith relay the note that his film is dead in the water until TS and Jason Lee's delightfully abrasive Brodie make it to their prized galleria and, a few glimpses of the autumnal American suburbs aside, whichever frustrated audience member made that call is exactly right. 

That this shopping centre must be physically traversed is an immediate boon for Smith and cinematographer David Klein, it makes the agonisingly long, static mediums that the director defaults to a little less likely. Smith, who began his career maxing out credit cards to buy black-and-white Kodak stock for Clerks, clearly isn't then inclined to waste precious celluloid with pick-ups, reverse angles or inserts. For this follow-up Smith largely favours a style of coverage and storytelling that lends itself well to interlaced television or, a little more charitably, the panned-and-scanned home video market. There are a few stray notes of John Hughes in evidence, not least the casting of Renée Humphrey as a sexualised Molly Ringwald stand-in or Ben Affleck as a Buzz McCallister who has grown into a buttfucking bully, but Smith isn't interested in rallying against middle-class malaise or indulging the childlike flights of fancy that Hughes delighted in. Mallrats isn't reflective in that sense, it's a film about twentysomethings made by twentysomethings. Received as an affront on its original release, with American critics behaving as if the second coming of Jim Jarmusch had squandered his talents on a listless Animal House knock-off, and poorly served in this cut by an excruciating prologue, all the good sense and carefully considered criticism in the world melt away when confronted by the pure sunshine that is the late Shannen Doherty smiling and battering talk show drums while a Weezer B-side plays. 

Cliffhanger

Director Renny Harlin follows-up Die Hard 2 with another snowbound action adventure, this time enlisting the services of Sylvester Stallone and his army of sweating stunt men. Viewed thirty years out of time, and with that aforementioned Bruce Willis sequel wearing grooves in your imagination, Cliffhanger obviously feels like a subordinate, even repetitious, experience. It's not just that both films featured tanned Hollywood musculature straining against curtains of fluffy crystalline snow, Harlin's latter feature even replays and remixes specific beats from its predecessor. These instances range from incidental acts of violence to full-blown special effects set-pieces. 

So where Die Harder's sub-zero environment allowed John McClane to pluck an icicle from a frozen awning then dagger it into an assailant's eye, Cliffhanger's chilly confines offer Stallone's Gabe Walker the opportunity to gorilla press his opponent into dripping stalactites. Cliffhanger, or rather Michael France and Sylvester Stallone's screenplay, also permits Harlin another pass at a plane crash. Die Hard 2's ill-fated Windsor airlines flight saw screaming civilians quickly burn up in a massive petrol detonation as a way to demonstrate the ruthlessness of that film's terrorists. Cliffhanger's take isn't over so quickly, we rattle around inside the downed Gulfstream as it grinds to a halt on snowcapped plains. 

The aircraft's windows burst, showering the passengers with glass, while the miniature jet hammers - nose first - through rows upon rows of splintering saplings. It's a terrific sequence, the scale effects enhanced by an especially violent sound mix that assigns iceberg cracks to snapping trunks. Another delightful spot of carnage occurs towards the end of the film: Gabe is trapped under ice and stalked by a turncoat treasury agent. Although Michael Rooker's Hal is racing to the rescue with a shotgun, Gabe uses a fictional piton gun to blast his foe. Clearly shot to account for Hal making a pellet-packing save, Cliffhanger instead replays the moment of Stallone firing his one-shot pistol, triggering umpteen soupy squibs on his attacker. As is often the case with Stallone's oeuvre, we are reminded that people aren't paying to see second-stringers rescue the guy at the top of the bill.