dear god , this is a fantastically bad film ! 
regardless of what i say about knock off , you can't grasp its awfulness from my words . 
you have to see it and experience it for yourself . 
here's the kicker , though -- i suggest that you do so . 
yes , this is a bad film -- easily one of the most incompetent films of the year -- but it has a certain misguided charm that makes it a unique kind of disaster to endure . 
in fact , i enjoyed myself for most of its brief running time , despite the dreadful acting and a completely incomprehensible story . 
don't get me wrong : i'm not excusing knock off . 
it reaches an unacceptable level of badness ; it's so incoherent that i wonder if it was hacked up worse than the avengers was . 
it also features some truly terrible performances from lela rochon , michael wong , paul sorvino , and -- of course -- jean-claude van damme . 
it does , however , have the entertaining presence of rob schneider , and the excessively inventive and pretentious direction of tsui hark . 
as i watched it , i occasionally wondered if it was aware of its own awfulness . 
now , in retrospect , it seems clear that it wasn't , but it's still a fascinating kind of mess . 
i don't like writing plot descriptions ( it is , by far , the most boring part of writing a review ) , but , in this case , i'm off the hook : there is no way i could write an accurate synopsis for knock off . 
for the sake of comparison , i had no trouble understanding the usual suspects during my first viewing . 
i paid closer attention to knock off , and the only thing i am able to say about it is that van damme plays a dude named ray , and is accused by the cia ( i think ) of selling knock off products ( knock off products are , of course , products that look like name-brand materials but are generic and cheap ) . 
i don't know what any of this has to do with martial arts , but there are lots of martial arts in the film . 
ray is good at martial arts , so when he has to beat up bad guys , there's no problem . 
rob schneider plays his sidekick , although i had no idea who he really was by the end of the film . 
lela rochon is just some woman who accuses them of stuff , while paul sorvino is both the good guy and the bad guy at once ! 
in fact , every character goes through so many shifts from good to bad that the end provides absolutely no insight into what any of them really do . 
in that order , knock off is completely incoherent and makes absolutely no sense . 
but what a strange mess it is . 
it was written by stephen e . de souza , who also wrote die hard and 48 hours . 
can this be the same man ? 
i don't see how , unless , of course , huge chunks of the film have been removed for the sake of running time . 
knock off seems to have an interesting premise ( as far as action films go ) , but there's no semblance here . 
for instance , van damme is introduced , and then seconds later he's running a chariot race through the streets of hong kong . 
why ? 
who knows . 
what are the implications of this ? 
i have no idea . 
most action films abandon depth in favor of action , and this is normally a problem . 
knock off , however , is the first film that i would have preferred to see with all of the talky sequences cut . 
the acting is embarrassingly bad : rochon , in particular , delivers each of her lines with stiff and talentless insincerity . 
sorvino , in addition , deserves better than this . 
van damme is bad , but he's charming in that bad way , and so i can't say that he's hard to watch ( although i rarely understood what he was saying ) . 
the only exception is rob schneider , who is actually quite funny a lot of the time . 
tsui utilizes so many tricks that he makes john woo look tame by comparison . 
they're all pointless gimmicks though , such as shots of the inner-workings of a knock off running shoe . 
but his action scenes are never boring : one particular piece inside of a fruit factory ( a fruit factory ? ) is well-choreographed . 
lots of the scenes are pitched well to comedy , such as our heroes' first encounter with the rochon character . 
but did tsui know that his film is beyond ludicrous ? 
i hope he did , for the alternative is a frightening thought . 
knock off has the feel of a truly terrible exercise in camp mania . 
if it were boring , i'd give it zero stars . 
but it's not boring : it's loud and excessive and completely incoherent . 
it's also funny , even when it isn't meaning to be funny . 
a bad film that succeeds as entertainment doesn't deserve to be fully lambasted . 
i recognize knock off for its irrefutable badness , but i can't deny it's zany , useless charm . 
oh , i know , they're just action scenes looking desperately for a real story , but they're fun action scenes amongst a crowd of laughably inane concepts . 
it's fun to admire the awfulness of a film like this , but that doesn't excuse the fact that it is , indeed , awful . 
