Kill 'em All (2017)

JC Van Damme single handedly created the action genre with his flashy ways. Not surprisingly, he gets older and others take over. On his way down, he cought us by surprise with his JCVD movie, in which he showed more emotion and acting skills than ever before.Maybe there was hope, but alas, in all movies since, his acting is gone, but also his willingness. He looks and feels unmotivated. All that could be forgiven, if only the action would make up for it. Since this movie has JCVD and Daniel Bernhardt, I was waiting for one final battle, with all the flashy kicks you could ask for.And than............nothing. Van Damme lost his will to act, but also the will to fight. To be fair, Van Damme did one nice spin kick. But that was so obviously a stunt double, that it was shameful. After movies such as this one and Black Water, for me the Van Damme era is over.

Some people wrote that one cannot expect "Hard Target"- like quality from an aged van Damme. Well, I agree that it's difficult to work with a small budget. A small budget film won't look like a Marvel production, period. Why don't the people involved focus on fight choreography instead? I don't get it. JCVD's age shouldn't matter. Fighting is where the film crew could score points but they don't. It seems like very few people in Hollywood actually get what a beautiful fight could look like. In the words of America's orange clown: SAD! Please watch some old Jackie Chan movies and make fighting visually entertaining again. Nobody cares about a story in a B-Movie. Not really, anyway. We, the old fans of JCVD, just wanna see him perform martial arts. That's it!

Jean Claude Van Damme is getting old, so he needs to take it easy these days with the action scenes. Here he shares the action with Autumn Reeser.Van Damme plays Philip who ends up wounded at a hospital in America. Reeser plays Suzanne, an ER nurse who is patching him up when a bunch of European bad guys arrive and cause mayhem. Philip ends up saving Suzannne's life instead.The film is told in flashback as Suzanne is being interrogated by two FBI agents. You will quickly gather that the film has an unreliable narrator and you can kind of guess the twist in The Usual Suspects kind of way.The film wants to make some kind of statement about the break up of the former Yugoslavia, I thought the time span was all over the place.

I tried so hard to review this movie already. Made some reviews, saved them, erased them, started over. Its really complicated as part of me liked it while the other part really tough it was lacking so much to be a good movie. The cast is genuinely good, not only Van Damme but Daniel Bernhardt which, funny enough, was Van Damme replacement in the Bloodsport Franchise back in the days, but also played villains opposite the like of Keanu Reeves in John Wick or Chuck Norris in The Cuttter. Kris Van Damme, JC's son finally get some action role and even have a fight scene with his father.But despite all of this... the movie failed to keep me interest at times. First of all the cinematography. I don't know if its to hide JCVD's old age or the lack of talents on some of the villains, but the movie suffer from a bunch of jump cuts and camera angle changes during fight scenes. Its not as bad as some of Steven Seagal movies of recent years but its still hurting the movie. The movie also include a lot of "signature spin kicks" which seem not so convincing in this day and age. Maybe Van Damme lost some speed too.As for the story and characters... i think this is where the movie hurt the most for me. JCVD play once again a sad depressing character. On top of this the movie start with this character injured so he look even more tired and depress than other movies. Van Damme proved many thing he is good in roles that involve lots of personality and cheesy dialogue. I enjoyed so much his performances in Ennemies Closer and Welcome to the Jungle. He need to cut from the blank and depress characters, as he has not aged too well facially and look even worst when playing those roles. Honestly he look 15 years older than the age of the character he is supposed to play in this movie. Despite all of this, its not a bad movie. Its very basic low budget action flick, but surprisingly it revolve much more on martial arts than you would expect from JCVD in the current years which i appreciated. Sure there not the best fights filmed on screen, but its decent enough to keep you entertained. There is a few gun fights but there kept to a minimal. Autumn Reeser is pretty decent and the other "big names" are mostly extended glorified cameos.I would say its the kind of movie which is nice to watch once, as a rental or cable TV watch, but it won't leave a mark or anything on you and you won't remember it in T-Minus 2 days... as Jeremy would say.