Double Impact

"Feel the Impact"

The story begins 25 years ago with the opening of the Hong Kong Victoria Harbour tunnel by business partners Paul Wagner and Nigel Griffith (Alan Scarfe). Paul attends with his twin baby sons, Chad and Alex. However, after the celebrations, the family is followed home by a Triad hit squad on orders from Griffith and crime lord Raymond Zhang (Philip Chan). A shootout ensues, in which Paul and his wife are killed by the bodyguard Moon (Bolo Yeung). Chad is rescued by the family bodyguard, Frank Avery (Geoffrey Lewis), and raised abroad. Alex is dropped off on the doorstep of a Hong Kong orphanage.

Those 25 years later Chad (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and Frank run a successful martial arts business, and Frank reveals he has a twin brother. Alex (Van Damme) turns out to be a streetwise punk in the Hong Kong criminal world. When finally meeting Alex, they get off on a rocky start. But there is no time for them to bicker as they have to fight Zhang and Griffith gang to get their revenge and claim the tunnel as theirs. Double Impact is often said to be a better Double Dragon movie than the actual live action adaption.

Tropes used in Double Impact include:
  • Amazonian Beauty: Kara, who is played by a world-class bodybuilder.
  • Anti-Hero: Alex is a Type IV. He is a minor crook, very possessive of his girlfriend Danielle, and does not like his brother at first. He mellows out halfway through the movie and becomes more of a type III.
  • Ax Crazy: Moon and Kara.
  • Big Bad Duumvirate: Griffith and Zhang.
  • Bottomless Magazines: There are several abuses of this throughout, but by far the most glaring is during the warehouse scene about halfway through. Alex dual wields a pair of Beretta 92FS (which hold 15 rounds, plus one in the chamber), and during a protracted shootout, clearly fires in excess of 30 or more rounds from each gun without stopping to reload.
  • Butch Lesbian: Kara.
  • Co-Dragons / The Dragon: Moon is the dragon and Number Two for Zhang, while Kara and Pete are co-dragons to Griffith. Though all three share equal authority when both big bads are involved.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Alex, Chad, Moon, Kara, and Peter.
  • Crazy Jealous Guy: Alex!
  • Dirty Coward: Griffith and Zhang.
  • Damsel in Distress / Dude in Distress: Danielle and Frank later in the movie.
  • Dumb Muscle: Averted with Moon who is clever, crafty, and vicious.
  • Evil Eye: Moons damaged right eye makes him look more evil and intense than before. See Mismatched Eyes and Scars Are Forever.
  • Evil Laugh: Moon.
  • Expy: Several of course:
    • Alex is Billy and Chad is Jimmy with Danielle being Marian/Marion the love interest.
      • characterwise, Alex is closer to Jimmy, but Jimmy doesn't get the girl.
    • Kara is Linda. She even wears an outfit similar to female enemies in the first game, but she does not carry a whip.
    • Moon is one to Abobo and Bolo. He wields oil drums and is a Giant Mook. So this makes him an expy of an expy an exp.. Aaah!
    • Peter is this to the Mysterious Warrior from Double Dragon II: The Revenge. He does not have supernatural powers or dresses like him for that matter, but he uses darkness to his advantage as this video demonstrates.
  • Extremity Extremist: Peter uses nothing but kicks when fighting. It makes sense considering he's wearing spurs on his shoes for extra damage. Alex and Chad do mix it up with there moves, but the former seems to do a lot of his fighting with punches, chops, elbows, and neck breaks. The latter usually pulls of a lot of kicks and spin kicks.
  • Fan Vid: The Van Damme Fan 2009 has put out a series of videos with clips of Double Impact replaced with sound effects from Double Dragon II on the NES.
  • Guns Akimbo: Alex does this a couple of times with pistols in the movie.
  • Hurricane Kick: Of course. This is a Van Damme movie after all.
  • Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The mooks are alright shots at the beginning when they're killing Chad and Alex's parents, but later on, when it's Van Damme they're shooting at...
  • Jerkass -> Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Alex.
  • Knife Nut: Kara carries a switch blade.
  • Mismatched Eyes: Moon's right eye is milky grey-white.
  • Nice Guy: Chad.
  • The Quiet One: Moon has about a total of three lines. One of them is in Chinese and there are no subtitles for that one line.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Alex is red, and Chad is blue
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The entire premise of the film.
  • Roundhouse Kick
  • Scars Are Forever: Moon as result of getting shot in the face by Frank has one underneath his right eye.
  • Slasher Smile: Moon sports a few of these.
  • Shirtless Scene: Moon and Chad during their fight.
  • Shout-Out: See expy for more. It seems the people working on this film were closet fans of the Double Dragon games. Considering this movie came out in 1991, Double Dragon was still popular at the time and arcade machines were commonly found in movie theaters and arcades.
  • Theme Twin Naming: Chad and Alex. It is not so much as rhyming as it is the syllables. Their names each have only two syllables and four letters.
  • You Have Failed Me...: Moon kills one of his men for failing to beat up Alex (though they don't know yet that it's Chad they are fighting). Also Griffith and Zhang have Kara kill one of their associates for having one of their drug labs destroyed.
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