Mention Jean Claude Van Damme to any action movie aficionado and you'll see their eyes beam remembering films such as Bloodsport, Kickboxer, TimeCop and perhaps even Hard Target.
So what happened to JCVD? Well his style of violent action movies has been dead in the water for many years and plus his films, although interesting, always end up being another 80s styled movie - lots of cheese, OTT action and stupid story lines.
VD has been relegated to Direct-to-Video, and having seen the mess that is "The Order" - I have to wonder what happened to VD and his movie career.
Its refereshing to see an action movie set in the middle east, but did they have to resort to so may sterotypes, cliches and just pointless chases. For example, the cleavage busting police lady joins up with VD to save the world and ain't no jihad gonna stop him from his die hard in the middle east mission....except that this isn't die hard. Those times are long gone.
Charlton Heston makes a brief cameo - and ironically gets shot in the stomach - well I thought it was ironic considering his stance on guns.
Also in there is the worst bad guy I've ever seen - Brian Thompson, his sneering smile reminded me of Gustav Graves in Die another Day - yet Thompson gives no real venom or character to VD's enemy - he's just a heavy who got lucky and now wants to start WW3.
Meanwhile JCVD takes on the entire Isralei police force in karate fights - at last, I thought, a chance to see how JCVD would fare against the hand-to-hand combat skills of the Isralei police/army force - but it turns out its more of a flashy leg kicking match - another opportunity missed.
If I could resolve this story line in one sentence its this: A die hard in the middle east meets Indiana Jones. Its unfortuente that VD could not achieve either the gusto of die hard nor the charm of indiana jones and its just a mess.
Overall: 1/10.
