Bull On The Big Screen

The day after swaggering among Hollywood stars at the Oscar festivities—wearing a black velvet top hat, no less—Dennis Rodman was sidelined for the rest of the regular season when he sprained his left knee in a Chicago Bulls win over the Dallas Mavericks. But you can still see the Worm play. In Double Team, a fantastically bad, bullets-'n'-bombs spy film costarring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Rodman appears in all his rainbow-haired, body-pierced splendor.

Rodman (left) plays Yaz, a weapons dealer with headquarters in the sordid back rooms of a smoky, neon-lit Amsterdam sex club. And while Rodman's thespian efforts are often ham-handed and forced—partly due to an insipid and cliché-ridden script—he actually holds up well against the clumsy performances of Van Damme (Jack Quinn, a world-class counterterrorist) and a buffed-up Mickey Rourke (Stavros, a terrorist). Indeed, Rodman provides moments of welcome relief and humor in a movie that is just plain lousy.

Rodman's mannerisms in a basketball uniform, his flopping arms and long, loping strides, are apparent even when he's dressed to kill in a zoot suit. And though Rodman can't kick and tumble as well as Van Damme, his physical ability proves an asset when he convincingly, and acrobatically, beats up a posse of bad guys.

Screenwriter Don Jakoby shows no mercy in reminding viewers of Rodman's night job. When Yaz and Quinn skydive using a parachute that opens to resemble a basketball, Yaz exclaims, "That's what I call hang time." In another scene he says, "It's time to get off the bench. The best defense is a good offense." And when Yaz hurls a skull in an attempt to detonate a bomb (don't ask) and fires wide, he says, "Oops, air ball."

"You need practice," says Quinn.

"I hate practice," replies Yaz.

An essentially plotless and pointless series of improbable stunts, Double Team is sure to, as Jakoby might write, foul out. But Rodman's hair goes from bright white to radioactive green, he gets off a few humorous lines, and, well, the guy does have a funny face. It's not Rodman's fault the movie fails. He's on a bad team.