Explainer | ‘Who can forget the sauna fight?’ Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Maximum Risk, its director’s Hollywood debut, been all but erased from Ringo Lam’s canon. It’s worth another look
- The Belgian martial-arts star wanted to work with Hong Kong’s Ringo Lam, but their first film together, Maximum Risk, lacked the director’s usual flourishes
- The 1996 movie has been all but erased from Lam’s canon, despite featuring ‘a couple of great car sequences’ and ‘a really fun elevator fight’, expert says
Top Hong Kong action film director Ringo Lam Ling-tung first went to Hollywood in the early 1990s, around the same time as John Woo Yu-sum. But he became bored by the slow pace of moviemaking there, and especially disliked the many rounds of meetings required to get a picture into production.
“I have talked with producers, but by the time they finish talking up the script, or rounding up the stars, I have usually started on a [Hong Kong] movie, and have been unable to take the offer,” he said in an interview with the Post’s Winnie Chung.
So whereas Woo, who really wanted to succeed in the US, stayed in Hollywood, Lam continued to focus on his work in Hong Kong.
It was not until 1996’s Maximum Risk, a contemporary actioner, that the director made a Hollywood film. It’s a sprawling thriller revolving around a New York cop, played by Jean Claude Van Damme, who’s searching for the killers of his twin brother – a sibling he was unaware of until his corpse turned up.
Lam only took the US project because everything moved very quickly. The film’s producer, Moshe Diamant, who’d made his name repackaging ninja films for US release in the 1980s, contacted Lam when he was on holiday in Toronto in 1995 with his family.
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Although Lam said he didn’t want to take “another one of those meetings”, Diamant persuaded him to make Maximum Risk, then called The Exchange, after four phone calls.
Knowing Lam’s feelings about waiting around, Diamant quickly presented him with the script and cast list, and said he would draw up a contract immediately. Diamant wanted Lam to start work right away.
“Luckily I did not have any Hong Kong films I had to start work on immediately,” Lam told the Post, noting that he was able to put a planned film for Wong Jing on hold. “It was only after much negotiation that Diamant allowed me to come back to Hong Kong for 10 days to pack my things.”
According to novelist and film historian Grady Hendrix, author of These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America, the film’s star Van Damme was instrumental in the process.
“Van Damme knew who Hong Kong’s big directors were and he made it a priority to work with them,” Hendrix says.
Noting the problems that John Woo had encountered in Hollywood, Lam decided to make the film in a Hollywood style, rather than try to replicate his Hong Kong work. He hired a US crew, and did not even import a Hong Kong action choreographer.
“When I decided to make this film, I thought, ‘It will be my first Hollywood picture, and it could be my last’. If I took up the challenge, I felt I should make a 100-per cent Hollywood picture. So I didn’t bring anyone with me,” Lam told the Post.
“I didn’t know anyone in Hollywood, so I had to find everyone from scratch – the director, the photographer, the stunt coordinator, everyone. I had to interview them and watch their films,” he said.
The resulting film unsurprisingly lacked many of Lam’s characteristic flourishes. The action is filmed American style, although the quick cuts reflect Hong Kong action-film making, which moves much faster on screen than its American counterpart.
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There is also a strong focus on Van Damme’s martial arts skills, even though Lam has never really been considered a martial arts director.
Hendrix says Lam did bring something of himself to the film. “Lam specialises in intense, close-up, gritty action scenes and big ballistic car chases. There’s a couple of great car sequences in this one and a really fun elevator fight,” he says.
“And who can forget the sauna fight with some of the world’s toughest towels, shot almost 10 years before Viggo Mortensen did the same thing in Eastern Promises? It probably also helped that the editor on Maximum Risk was Brian De Palma’s regular editor, Bill Pankow,” Hendrix says.
Maximum Risk is a fairly enjoyable watch today – the numerous car chases and car crashes are exciting – but it has been all but erased from Lam’s canon. The film was considered a big disappointment at the time of release.
“Apart from some nifty camerawork which lifts the action sequences above their routine setting, Maximum Risk is distinguished only by its mediocrity,” said the Post review of the film.
“Maximum Risk falls between the cracks, both for Ringo Lam and for Jean-Claude Van Damme,” adds Hendrix. “John Woo’s Van Damme movie, Hard Target, is deliriously over-the-top, and it’s earned a place in exploitation film history, and Tsui Hark’s two movies with Van Damme, Double Team and Knock Off, are absolutely bonkers.”
“Ringo Lam made three movies with Van Damme and despite all their clones, and Russian prisons, and twins, they’re relatively straightforward. They just don’t stick in your mind the way Van Damme’s work with those other directors does,” Hendrix notes.
After the release of Maximum Risk, Lam decided not to fully devote himself to a career in Hollywood, although he would occasionally return to work with Van Damme in the years that followed.
“For now, I can say that I will not be moving to Hollywood. I still want to make Hong Kong films,” he told the Post in 1997.
“Lam only had a one-picture deal with Columbia for Maximum Risk. He wanted to do what Tsui Hark did, which was work in Hollywood, learn what he could, and bring it back to Hong Kong.
“Lam made two more movies with Van Damme but he didn’t have the bug to go to Hollywood the way John Woo did.”
In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the careers of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved industry.
