I think there is a Zen of encountering movies, not unlike encountering people. You need to get beyond the fact that they are incompetent at carrying who they are and dig into the essence of the person.
Art is all in the carrying, I think so you might find yourself admiring something that is incompetent, unartful, even repellently stupid if it has an engaging heart.
This disaster of a movie has an interesting kernel I think. It is only a disaster because the director and support crew thought that its center was in the thud of flesh between two brutes, a simple serial killer and a simpler cop. But you the viewer have the power to relocate that center to the encounter with self.
(For those who don't know the story, evil killer exists. Shadowy federal agency makes a clone and lends it to the discalced cop who is on the case. The cone has "memories" that are used to track the killer. The clone "grows")
Set aside the bizarre notion of the US government fighting terrorists by making more of them from scratch. (Insert your own political commentary here.) And set aside the notion that memories convey by genetics. The cool idea here, something like in "Faceoff" or "Purple Rose" or "Last Action Hero," or even "Thirteenth Floor." is that a personal stumbling through life has his stumbles fabricated from blows from the world, but has the ability to see them from the outside.
Encountering self is an old idea... in film and literature, and much deeper and more clever notions have been spun than this. But this ain't bad, at least in theory. And for my taste Van Damme is no worse than Li or Arnie and unless you get a real actor everyone else is roughly as good.
If they could just have more Schrader and less Harlin.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
