Maximum Risk (1996)

(On TV, February 1999) This film perpetrates the most fatal error that an action movie can make: It’s boring. Okay, so you can’t expect much from a Jean-Claude van Damme picture but still, this one is unusually lifeless. The curiously uninspired direction (by Hong Kong legend Ringo Lam) is partly to blame, but as usual the script is the weakest part of the whole. Maximum Risk picks up during its third act (excluding that forgettable meat-locker scene) but can’t make up for the lackluster first 90 minutes.