A direct-to-video-quality actioner distinguished primarily by its star's blatantly deteriorated martial-arts prowess.

There's promise here - evidenced by the satisfying deployment of Chekhov's remote-controlled gun - but this is a losing game.

As the star of Assassination Games, Jean-Claude Van Damme makes a lot of great decisions. As the executive producer, he appears to have made fewer.

Assassination Games doesn't fully exploit -- in, say, the manner in which Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa did -- the age and earned maturity of its leading man.