Directed by Peter Hyams (“Outland”), “Enemies Closer” is a seriously disappointing action film that has some interesting ideas in it but the execution is rather lame. The movie’s poster and marketing would lead one to believe that Jean-Claude Van Damme (“Universal Soldier”, “Cyborg”) is the film’s star but he’s not.

In “Enemies Closer”, a plane carrying a shipment of drugs crashes near the border between the United States and Canada. Henry (Tom Everett Scott “Race To Witch Mountain”) is a park ranger that has to team up with Clay (Orlando Jones “Evolution”), a man that blames Henry for the death of his brother, when a group of French-Canadian drug gangsters turn up to collect the goods.

Henry is one of the most boring main characters that I have ever seen in an action film and Tom Everett Scott’s performance is quite frankly abysmal. Clay is marginally more interesting than Henry and the performance from Orlando Jones is not completely terrible. Van Damme plays Xander, the leader of the gang and he is also a militant vegan (I’m not kidding). He’s quite eccentric and feels the need to bring up his veganism and environmental politics at every conceivable moment. The first action scene shows that Van Damme can still pack a punch but only serves to tease you because most of the action sequences are rather boring and do not involve Van Damme.

A lot of “Enemies Closer” sounds great on paper with the characters on an isolated island, an uneasy relationship between the two protagonists, action scenes involving boats, a fistfight up a tree and so on but so much of it feels underwhelming. The whole veganism thing is totally bizarre and adds very little to the film but at the same time, it is the only thing in here that does not come across as generic. Fans of Jean-Claude Van Damme might like to see him play the villain here but there are also likely to be disappointed at how little he actually appears in the movie.