If one of your New Year’s resolutions was to watch more movies, grab yer Sharpie, pal. (If you’d wanted to talk quinoa, pilates, or not smoking in the house with all the windows closed while passed out on a pizza box as “Seven Samurai” blares in the background, you’d be in the wrong place, friend.) […]
If Enemies Closer had been made 20 years ago, it would have quickly vanished from theaters, replayed endlessly on HBO, and inspired the next generation of critics to call it a neglected gem, not because it s especially good, but because it stars an aging action star, has a couple of perverse elements, and is directed by a filmmaker with a cult following: Peter Hyams. The former cinematographer emerged in the 1980s and 90s with a string of action and sci-fi pictures that were visually sumptuous but dramatically just OK: Outland, Running Scared, 2010, Timecop, Sudden Death. Those last two starred Jean-Claude Van Damme, whose work as the villain in Enemies Closer is the only reason to see this film unless you re also a devotee of Hyams son John, who edited the picture and has carved out his own notable career as an action stylist (his last two Universal Soldier sequels merged imaginatively choreographed butt kicking with arthouse strangeness).