Knock Off

Knock Off (1998)

There is no substitute.

A fashion designer and his CIA agent business partner must join forces to stop a group of terrorists from smuggling explosives in counterfeit jeans during the handover of Hong Kong.

Date of release
1998-09-04
TMDB
5.4 / 10 (417)
Runtime
1h 31m
Genres
Action, Crime, Comedy, Adventure
Director
Tsui Hark

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $35M

Knock Off is a 1998 action film directed by Tsui Hark and starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, their second collaboration following Double Team (1997). The American and Hong Kong co-production co-stars Rob Schneider, Lela Rochon, Michael Wong, Carman Lee and Paul Sorvino. Set against the backdrop of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong, the film is about a fashion executive who uncovers a conspiracy involving counterfeit goods.

Production

According to Mike Leeder, the role of Inspector Han was originally meant for Tsui Hark's regular collaborator Jet Li, but he declined in order to play the villain in Lethal Weapon 4.

Shooting took place mainly in Hong Kong during the summer of 1997, though some of the water-set action sequences were shot in the Philippines due to security concerns with the actual handover ceremony. The film is one of the last in the world to feature Kai Tak Airport still in use; the airport closed in 1998. Sammo Hung was the second unit director on the film.

The film’s music was credited to Ron and Russell Mael of American new wave band Sparks. In an interview with historian and critic Aaron Hillis, they noted that, although they maintained a positive friendship with Tsui Hark through their attempts to produce a film adaptation of Mai, the Psychic Girl, due to studio pressure the score ultimately ended up being more the work of additional music composer Varouje Hagopian than them.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended