Leofwine_draca A surprisingly complex thriller from Ringo Lam, a noted director in the action genre, making his first western film. The amount of sub plots help to make this one more interesting than most, as throughout the film Van Damme is being chased around by four or five different groups of people, this makes for entertaining viewing. Loyalties change, baddies come and go, and the film flies by with many varied and exciting action sequences filling out the time. I liked it a lot.Thankfully, the film is not solely full of martial arts or just plain shooting. It's a mixture of both. The various shoot-outs are well staged and choreographed, while Van Damme gets to deliver some really hefty kicks to his enemies. And it's a memorable group of baddies this time around, including corrupt FBI agents, Russian assassins and the Russian Mob. One blond-haired hulk is virtually indestructible, and the three or four fight scenes between him and Van Damme are probably some of the slickest, neatest fights that Van Damme has ever put on film. The final battle in the lift is great.The characters in this film are slightly more fleshed out than usual, and the baddies at least have a reason to want Van Damme dead. There are also plot threads, including a romantic one between Van Damme and Henstridge, although thankfully this is kept to a minimum. Also, we get to see some surprisingly poignant moments, which are not necessarily laughable (although you may scoff). Jean-Claude Van Damme looks pretty old and tired in this film, but I guess that's because he was suffering from the cocaine addiction thing at the time. Still, he's as powerful and agile as ever (or is that the stuntman?), jumping through windows, falling from heights and generally being an all-round action man (but more believable than most, thanks to his everyday hairstyle and clothes, this Van Damme is closer to reality than in his other films). Natasha Henstridge is adequate as the love interest, but quite shallow really. The rest of the villains are all memorable and eminently hissable.However, the acting is not really the main priority with Van Damme's films. It's the action people watch for, and this film does not disappoint. So many different things happen in so many places (the film keeps shifting location), and there are some inspired set pieces (the entire bank thing is memorable), and even a fight between Van Damme and a chainsaw-wielding villain at the end. What more could you possibly want? I know Van Damme is not one of the most popular stars, far from it, and the general consensus is that his films are cheesy, but I'm just finding these early ones to be better and better as time goes on. MAXIMUM RISK is criminally overlooked and deserves far more respect than it currently has.

jonathanruano "Maximum Risk" would have been a good picture, except that there were so many fight scenes and shoot outs, so much vandalism, and so many explosions that they almost crowded out the film's human characters. And this is the main flaw of "Maximum Risk": it should have been about its human characters. The story of Alain Moreau's (Jean Claude Van Damme) search for the people who killed his brother Mikhail Suvurov had the makings of a good film and maybe even a great film, as British director Mike Hodges proved when he directed Michael Caine in Get Carter (1974). Moreover, this film also makes it clear that Alain did not know he had a brother, until he learnt of Mikhail's premature and violent death -- and this was another opening that the filmmakers of "Maximum Risk" should have exploited more fully by writing better dialogue and better scenes for the actors and cutting back on the explosions and vandalism. Yet all of these opportunities were squandered because the filmmakers decided to dumb down this picture. Jean Claude Van Damme, for example, gets even fewer lines than the ones delivered by Natasha Henstridge (who plays Alain's love interest, Alex Minetti), even though he is supposed to be the protagonist in this picture.Now this film is not all bad. The set-up for this picture was good and I also liked the small twist two-thirds into the film, where we see a rare thing in a JCVD movie: Jean Claude Van Damme successfully making a cogent argument involving some sophisticated analysis. But the main strength of this picture has to be Natasha Henstridge's performance as the JCVD love interest, Alex Minetti. Henstridge may not have the best dialogue to work with, but she is able to imbue her lines with enough emotion and intensity to make her character seem plausible. She is probably the most interesting thing in this picture. Jean Claude Van Damme, by contrast, can do little more than reprise his bad boy (who always gets into fights and gets his face bruised) role from films like "Death Warrant," "Double Impact," and "Nowhere to Run." He is not doing anything new in this picture that he did not do far better in previous films and, what is more, we do not even see him do much of his choreographed karate either. Overall a disappointing film.5.4/10

sol **SPOILERS** It's when Niece France policeman Alain Moreau, Jean Claude Van-Damme, was summoned to the city morgue to check out a stiff who was killed by going head-first through a moving car's windshield that he realized that he wasn't born alone in the world! His twin brother Mikhail Suverov, came into the world together, within the space of five minutes, with him!Going to see his mom, Stephane Avdran, a shocked Alain learned from her that his brother we given up at birth for adoption since she, being single and with no means of support, couldn't take care of him much less Alain. Determined to find out just what the mysterious Mikhail was doing all these years Alain, finding out that he lived in New York City, took over his identity in order to clear up that mystery! And what a mystery it was! Mikhail was a top member of the Russian Mob in Brighton Beach, or littler Oddesa as it's know, Brooklyn! It was Mikhail who was playing double-agent for the Russian Mob in getting the goods on members of the NYPD and FBI Agents who were secretly working for it!It doesn't take long for Alain, impersonating his brother Mikhail, to go into action having it out with top Russian Mob hit-man Red-Face, Stefanos Mitsakakis, sent by the Russian Mob, in mistaking him for his dead brother Mikhail, first in Niece then in Brooklyn and then back in Niece before he, with the help of a bowie knife, finally put him away for good. Alain also got to know his late brother's girlfriend Alex Minetti, Natasha Henstridge, who worked as a bar maid in a Brighton Beach Russian Mob run nightclub, the Bohemian, who then ended up falling in love with him. Even though Alain put her life in mortal danger by Alex just knowing him.There's also the two dirty FBI Agents Pellman & Loomis, Paul Bn-Victor & Frank Senger, who were responsible for Mikhail death back in Niece who together with the Russain Mob wanted Alain to get his hands on a secret little black book, together with audio tapes and photos, that was locked away in a Niece bank safe deposit box. The contents of that book can can implicated them in dealing with the mob and send the two , as well as dozens of other FBI Agents and NYPD policemen, up the river for the rest of their lives!**SPOILER** The big final in the movie after Alain had almost single handed wrecked half of Brighton Beach, together with the Russian mobsters who live there, takes place back in Niece France where the film first began. It's there where Alain finishes the job that he at first started there by putting an end to what was still left of the Russian Mob together with its partners in crime FBI Agents Pellman & Loomis. Alain achieved all that in a wild bank shoot out together with a number of multi car explosions as well as a climatic bone chilling battle, in a massive walk-in freezer, with a crazed and out of control Loomis, using a chainsaw, and profusely sweating, in spite of the freezing cold, Pellman at a Niece meat packing factory!

thinker1691 It was once said, every single person has a twin living on the planet at the same time. In this movie our hero, Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Alain Moreau a police officer who learns he bears a striking resemblance to a gangster who has just been killed. A french officer called Sebastien, (Jean-Hugues Anglade) informs him of the dead man, whom Alain discovers is Mikhail, his actual brother. Deciding he want to learn more, he pretends to take his place. What he doesn't know is that his brother was a notorious, hunted gangster, with a girlfriend and is being chased by the Russian mafia, rouge F.B.I. agents and a whole slue of vicious men who want him dead. One of the worse is a man called 'Red Face' (Stefanos Miltsakakis) who has been contracted to kill him and will not stop until he does. The movie is jam-pack with dramatic, exciting physical action, car chases and harrowing bullet ripping confrontations. This film is perhaps the best of the Jean Claude series and will stand on its own against others in the genre. Easilly recommended. ****