To me, this movie is perfection.

Redundant and unnecessary.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Yet another Jean-Claude Van Damme film that sees him tasked with playing two characters. In spite of its shaky reputation this isn't half bad, it delivers what most Van Damme fans expect, namely bonkers fights and shifty science. Plot has Van Damme as a fire obsessed serial killer who is always one step ahead of the police. Enter science as a chance to clone the killer arises and this sets in motion the wheels of the Van Damme clone trying to come to terms with his alien world as he, and world weary police officer Jake Riley (Michael Rooker), set about capturing the unhinged mad man.It's of course daft but it's a whole bunch of fun, and with the strong presence of Rooker supplemented by two very interesting performances by Van Damme, pic is in good hands. The fight scenes are smoothly choreographed and exciting, with director Ringo Lam clearly aware of what makes a Van Damme movie work. It's not prime Van Damme, but it's above average and well worth checking out for those so inclined. 6/10

Jake(Rooker, enjoyable to watch as usual) is a cop, obsessed with a serial killer(Van Damme, who, like we see in The Expendables 2, is a much better villain than hero), Torch(so named because of his MO... he uses a knife. ...OK, yeah, it's fire, obviously), who in turn stalks him, because films like Se7en made money. Government agents have the latter cloned(no, no, wait! It... it gets even better!), since they were going to hunt down terrorists like that(!), and, as we all know, "genetics carry memories"(I *told* you! Didn't I?). The best part about the latter is that it's just... slung out there(accompanied by the words "science has proved", which I think is one of those sayings that people use when they know that it just ain't so, like "no offense"). It's like they have it said out loud just to see if it gets any stupider like that, if it gets worse than it looks on the page of the screenplay. How is this going to help? ...who said it would, they just wanted two of him, like in Double Impact(it took a decade to forget why it was so wrong the first time). No, I'm kidding. There's a psychic link between the two. Duh! At this point in reading this, I can only imagine you're bleeding from the ear from the concentrated idiocy of the core concept, so let's not dwell on that any longer. The titular Replicant(yes, yes, that's... very cute, you watched Blade Runner, we get it) is like a child(or possibly even less mentally adept... perhaps that's just JCVD's vacant expression... to be fair, he does well in this role, as well, and the shift between the two is seamless), and our other lead has to take care of him, and this is where it gets interesting, as there is a mirroring, and the nature vs. nurture debate is handled, without being preachy(not that it's entirely subtle, either). Acting is decent. The action is OK, though it barely really needed to be the Belgian Karate champ in the dual role - he gets to do some of those kicks we like to see, sure, but that seems like the afterthought, as he mostly doesn't go up against anyone skillful(he's mostly taking on regular people... and for some reason, he at one point uses a vacuum cleaner as a weapon... no, really). Who looks at him and thinks "mass murderer"? At best, it is quite tense and fast-paced, such as the climax and at least one of the chases. It goes for usual genre clichés(even the relatively recent one of "unmotivated personal endangerment by supposedly professional protagonist"), and we get a one-liner or two that are as dumb as they are uninspired. Ringo Lam, who also helmed Maximum Risk, directs this(and gets us into it, at times, using excitement to distract from... well, scroll back up and see it again, if you've regained your senses and blocked it out), presumably because he was disappointed that his last "two of Jean-Claude" flick didn't have them both featured, and alive, at the same time(on that, while the majority of the tricks to make it look like there's two of him are as unconvincing as his usual performance, there are several effective bits). There is some moderate to strong language, bloody violence and disturbing content as well as a little sexuality(no nudity, and mostly audio) in this. I recommend this to fans of its stars. 5/10

I think we can never wait an A+ movie from the Belgian martial arts star. But between all those weak movies he made after his only one chance period, this is a big-good-surprise. Maybe it's Ringo Lam the answer or maybe Van Damme realized, that he must turn his character in a better way. I don't know but Replicant works for me. Okay I was a big fan of JCVD in the '90s. And I always hoped maybe Tarantino will bring him back to the top 10. The Replicant is not a typical Van Damme movie. He plays a double role like in Double Team but the story is much better than in 1990. It's not perfect there are typical B-movie parts and we can clearly see here is nothing to do with Hollywood. In his way with the good(!!!) acting of JCVD and Michael Rooker Replicant goes higher than we can imagine. Van Damme's double character is good enough. Action comes with the evil side and feelings and a lot of things more with the "clone". Some parts of the movie are really good. Especially when Rooker punishes Van Damme in the basement. A really good scene!!! So, maybe You like him, maybe not give him a chance! It's worth to see and wonder how can a B-movie star climbing near to the top of the Hollywood mountains.

OK, I can see a few slight redeeming glimmers in this mess but only a few. Co-star Michael Rooker puts in his usual grim-faced hard-nosed performance and Van Damme makes a convincingly creepy bad guy. OK. So? Well, Van Damme's other role as the semi-psychic "replicant" might as well be played by a Orangutan. In fact you would have hardly noticed any difference in the acting. I am not kidding because that is essentially who the replicant is personality-wise. It only goes to show how obviously flawed the concept was. I am not saying it is bad acting -- it isn't bad acting when you are playing the part of a "blank slate." The whole idea here is that clones could have "psychic connections" with their "twin" and this might allow Homeland Security to use them to "sniff out" an evil-doer. Duh, wait a minute. A clone is just a twin. It makes me ill to see effort wasted on a really stupid movie idea like this one and to see it labeled "Science Fiction." These Hollywood producers should stop doing so many hard drugs. There is a ton of written Science Fiction that has never made it to the large or small screen, and certainly some large quantity of that is better material than the rubbish of this movie. This is pretty lame garbage for 2001. Maybe it was a kneejerk 911 idea?