Friday night on channel 5

[ewx]

Replicant starts off looking like a perfectly ordinary cop-catch-psycho film, but soon takes a strange sfnal twist: a three latter agency has created a clone of the killer, somehow telepathically linked to him, using DNA evidence recovered from the crime scenes. There's a nod to contemporary fears in that the cloning program is intended for use against terrorists, but this case “fits the profile” so is a gooding testing ground.

Given all that the plot is predictable enough; the one bit that actually surprised me probably shouldn't have, in retrospect. Although the details of the killer's crimes is well enough explained I didn't find it quite convincing as to why he commits them. The cop's relationship with the clone - who switches from uncomprehending autistic to martial arts virtuoso at the drop of a hat - is nicely done, but apart from these three main characters everyone else is mostly just there to propel the plot along. Van Damme fighting himself towards the end was kind of amusing.

Code Of Silence feels like a 70s plot with 80s production and haircuts. This time we have an ultra-honest cop caught up in a gang war. My attention was straying somewhat by this point so I'm not sure if the lengthy string of clichés was held together my some kind of justification or not, and the cop's ability to take on vast numbers of generic gang members and come out on top strained plausibility even by the standards of the genre.

In both films I found I was interpreting the fights much more in terms of the martial arts techniques I know than previously. A popular move in both of them was something quite similar to ushiro geri, but instead of spinning and kicking backwards the kick seemed to start early so that the strike was sideways. I've no idea if that would actually work well outside a film studio!