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4 K Blu-ray Review: Jeans, Gems, and Jean-Claude - The Beautiful Madness of Knock Off

When people talk about the "Chaos Cinema" era of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s career, they usually point to Double Team, but if you really want to see what happens when a legendary Hong Kong director is given a Hollywood budget and a bag of fever dreams, you have to look at the 1998 masterpiece of absurdity that is Knock Off. Directed by Tsui Hark, the visionary behind Once Upon a Time in China, this movie isn’t just an action flick; it’s a sensory assault where the camera doesn't just record the action, it stalks it, zooms through it, and occasionally behaves like it’s being piloted by a caffeinated hummingbird. Van Damme plays Marcus Ray, a high-society salesman in Hong Kong specializing in "knock-offs" like fake designer jeans and sneakers, joined by his partner Tommy Hendricks, played by Rob Schneider in a performance that is aggressively and unapologetically Rob Schneider. The plot involves the Russian Mafia, the CIA, micro-explosives hidden in the buttons of co...