After a well-received turn in Stallone’s action-revival sequel Expendables 2, Jean-Claude Van Damme puts on his villain mask once again in Lionsgate’s Enemies Closer. Pitted against him are the titular enemies – Tom Everett Scott and Orlando Jones.
The film will reunited Van Damme with his Timecop and Sudden Death director Peter Hyams, who went on to direct The Musketeer and the infamously panned A Sound of Thunder. Hyams is looking to go back to what he did best: fun, but hard-hitting, action films, which seems apparent in the official synopsis for the film:
Enemies Closer takes place after a major shipment of drugs goes missing on the US-Canadian border. Forest ranger and former Navy SEAL Henry is plunged into survival mode when the drug cartel forces him to help retrieve the downed package. Trapped in the wilderness with no communication to the outside world, Henry finds himself face to face with Clay, a man with a personal vendetta against Henry who has returned for retribution. Now, the two mortal enemies must make a choice: put aside their past and work together, or die alone at the hands of the drug runners, a ruthless gang who will stop at nothing to retrieve their lost cargo.
Enemies Closer is somewhat of a top-billing comeback for all three of the main leads. The world first saw Orlando Jones (Clay) on movie posters in 2001’s Evolution alongside David Duchovny and Julianne Moore. Jones has been seeing a revival in his career thanks to the new TV-hit Sleepy Hollow and some work he’s done on the online Machinima Prime channel. Tom Everett Scott (playing Henry) has been working since the early nineties, but saw his biggest roles in the Tom Hanks directed That Thing You Do and Dead Man on Campus.
Jean-Claude Van Damme is the apparent standout among the three, being arguably one of the biggest action stars in the 1980s and 1990s. Aside from the indie-hit JCVD, Van Damme has been fairly silent in the wide-release market for a decade and a half. Then he faced-off against the likes of Stall0ne, Statham, and Schwarzenegger in Expendables 2. He has recently gone viral in a Volvo ad that featured his trademark onscreen move: the split:
That Volvo ad has since garnered over 53 million hits since it’s debut only a few weeks ago. Is this the world asking for more JCVD? We’ll find out when Enemies Closer is released next January in theaters and OnDemand.
Check out the trailer here:
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