It's not just the lavishly unimaginative title that's so remarkable here. It's the hall-of-mirrors effect: is what you're seeing real? a parody? a parody of a parody? Maximum Risk, with Jean-Claude Van Damme playing twins (one of whom lasts a nanosecond before he is killed, thus requiring vengeance) had the audience hooting and wisecracking like kids at a puppet show.

Then there's the discrepancy between the quality of the cinematography and the quality of the writing. The camerawork is often slick film-school stuff, all interesting angles and moody lighting, whereas the plot seems like the imaginings of an excitable third-grader. Some of the dialogue had my toes curling till my soles bled. The action sequences are straight out of Buster Keaton; the characters have all the believability of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Maximum Risk is like a shiny BMW powered by a rubber band -- it's a bizarre, elaborate, mesmerizing façade. At the Cheri, the Fresh Pond, and the Circle and in the suburbs.