Sometimes the best movies revolve around relative evil taking on a greater evil, or multiple evils going head to head. Smoking Aces, Payback, and loads of others took this approach, and were fun, if not necessarily great, movies. And the folks out at Sony sent over an advance copy of Assassination Games for us to review, showing once again how much fun it can be when the baddies go head to head.

A pair of rival assassins find themselves going after the same target for a substantial million dollar reward. And when the two find themselves inadvertently thwarting each others’ attempt to kill the target, they start figuring that maybe they should be working together. But when the target starts fighting back, that’s going to make things especially difficult for our deadly duo.

You may rest assured, going in, there is plenty of action in here. Loads of fistfights and gunplay and exotic weaponry and the like. Plus, you’ve got a good amount of double-crosses going on, a few good betrayals, just a little romance to round things out and even a couple good laughs.

It’s the kind of thing we’ve all seen before, with Jean-Claude Van Damme taking the helm and doing a whole lot of the action stuff, and the plot closely resembling that of literally dozens of other movies before it. But with a movie like this, originality doesn’t matter near so much as the execution. And thankfully, the execution is well done here indeed.

It’s sharp, crisp, and the pacing moves along briskly. There’s enough action interspersed with the dialogue to keep things from ever getting boring, and though it’s no one’s idea of a unique title, it does do the job with maximum effectiveness. It’s fun to watch, and that’s the surest measure of success when it comes to a riotous action film. If it’s not any fun, then why watch? But if you get a nice adrenaline fix from watching characters drive fast and shoot stuff and blow stuff up and knock stuff down, well, then the movie is a success.

And since nothing really succeeds like success, the Screenhead Ten Scale declares Assassination Games to be a relative success and hands over a seven out of ten. This is no one’s idea of a unique or particularly enterprising title, but for a good old fashioned dose of more of the same, well, you won’t beat this one.