Knock Off - WHOSE PANTS ARE THESE?

Stinker Madness - The Bad Movie Podcast

The Russian mafia hatches a plan to blackmail America with the threat of Greek Fire microchip bombs delivered via Chinese counterfeit Levi's. The only thing standing in their way is CIA agent and his mark, a pants seller. Whatta bombshell plot!

So its the film that kept JCVD out of movie theaters all the way until The Expendables. And there is a pretty good reason for that. Its either a) confusing, b) vague, c) nonsense, and/or d) completely stupid. Which I guess, makes its more confusing than anything. The biggest problem is the editing. This suffers from that terrible time in the late 90's and early 00's of over editing and slo-mo in scenes that don't call for it. There was also 20 minutes of action sequences cut out of the film and instead all the Rob Schneider stuff is left in. Nice.

BUT what does make it in the film is one of the dumbest plots in an action movie and that's saying something. Its all about the pants. The CIA has three independent teams working on counterfeit pants....for years. These are deep operatives embedded in the Hong Kong industry of knock-off pants. Huh. Then the plot to blow up America with tiny bombs sent overseas by cargo freighters is such a unholy terrible plan. I don't think its gonna work out, Russian mafia.

There's a lot of good and fun shenanigans abound but sadly it just suffers from too many moving parts and very unclear editing. Which still makes it a "do" but its not a guarantee that you're going to like it.