JCVD (2008)

Jean-Claude Van Damme was never a huge movie star. He was known for cheap B-movies that showed off his abilities as a former champion kickboxer. They had a lot of fights, him doing the splits and trying to speak English.Most of them are forgettable. Bloodsport springs to mind as one of his better movies. But while he was known, he wasn't really considered an actor. That is, until now.He puts in a genuinely touching performance as a semi-fictionalized version of himself going through a bit of a mid-life crisis and seeing his world slowly crumbling around him. There's a nasty divorce, it shows his past where he was doing cocaine, he's going broke and the only way to live is to continue making bad B-movies. Even his daughter is ashamed of him because she gets teased a lot in school simply for having his last name.What follows is an interesting plot and some extremely well done acting by the Muscles from Brussels. It's not just a stupid martial-arts movie. It's his life.

"JCVD" gives homage to the actor Jean-Claude Van Damme, who's career kicked off in 1988 with an action movie called "Bloodsport". The film produced in season 2007/2008 in the actor's originated area Belgium has been given an art-house touch by director Mabrouk El Mechri, who is having fun with the written material, but is unable to make any statement that would stick with the audience after the movie runs out. In that sense the film stays a visual collage of arranged sequences in which the lead takes reminiscence to his past movies and signature action moves. Anything further in the script as sub themes from a custody court drama to a bank hostage situation is forgettable. The cinematographer wants to be innovative as Emmanuel Lubezki's orchestrated urban war sequence in "Children of Men" (2006) but only falls flat with no immersive push ins. So everything whats left of an indecisively directed wanna-be art-house film is the performance of Jean-Claude Van Damme, who uses the loosely connected scenes to show some personal character insides beyond the usual physical action.

Jean-Claude Van Damme is an action figure. His career lived its blaze between the late 1980s and the late 1990s. Because after that, and due to his personal problems and drug addiction, Van Damme didn't find work unless, mostly, in the "V" movies, where he continued his career yet on a less big level.The thing is Van Damme wanted to assure his acting capacities some times, as in Nowhere to Run (1993), and In Hell (2003). Or while doing 2 different roles in movies like Double Impact (1991), and Replicant (2001). Of course he's not Robert De Niro, though at least he tried to be someone else Jean-Claude Van Damme.Here, he is someone else Jean-Claude Van Damme. He's Jean-Claude Van Damme, the human being. Actually, the man wanted to be frank with himself, apologize to his audience for his sins, get purged, and maybe get the producers trust again, all in a form of a heist thriller comedy. Seems good ambition, but good intentions are never enough alone !The script couldn't be that hot heist thriller comedy. The thriller part was lame; since the evil gang wasn't menacing, the exciting situations weren't exciting, and the last third of the movie was a perfect haphazard, with everything solving itself in almost farcical manner. And the comedy part was lazy and unsatisfying. It causes couple of smiles here and there, and that was it !The JCVD judging JCVD part wasn't well-made. The movie's drama doesn't lead to it appropriately. So this is why the famous 6 minutes monologue seemed out of context and somehow inserted. The title character wasn't on the verge of death to confess, or put in moral dilemma to emotionally explode. It's clear that this movie's drama didn't provide much after its initial situation of real action star misunderstood in a "Dog Day Afternoon" bank robbery, whether in terms of exploring deeply the lead character, or spicing up that "Dog Day Afternoon" thriller !Save the conversation between Van Damme and the taxi deriver, the matter of letting the movie's cast improvise their dialog didn't work. The side characters weren't treated fairly; you won't remember any of them after the viewing. The acting of the evil team was a cross between dull and silly. I absolutely didn't get the matter of chartreuse image for all the time. Perhaps it's a way to separate this movie in specific from all Van Damme's other movies, by looking more realistic and expressing some depression. But even if, making the whole thing with this color pushed the movie to be visually boring, and ended up as artistic more than meaningful !As for the Pros : Van Damme's acting was distinctly truthful, though with not so right script. It's like hearing the best voice with the wrong song, or not complete song in the first place. The first third of the movie is its best; with the intro's long-one-shot fighting scene, the court scene, and some of the dialog and thrill during the bank robbery's start. Dealing with Van Damme as usual human being, without any super halos, was this movie's true achievement. He's here a shattered man and father who happens to be an international symbol of never defeated man. It's notable how the movie uncovers the painful reality beneath the comfortable fakeness. And finally, loved the pure ambition of Van Damme's own life's drama mixed with heist thriller comedy, despite not carrying it out thoroughly. (JCVD), the movie, tried to present JCVD, the movie star, as a desperate mundane man in a thriller comedy, which adds more to the power of JCVD the movie star. The problem is that it couldn't be catchy or solid thriller comedy, however added some to the power of JCVD. Yes, I loved its ambition, but it was incomplete. Compared to similar ambition, which provides a real life movie star who's confessing his faults and regretting them, a genre movie, and thorough executing for both matters; then Pauly Shore Is Dead (2003) is more perfect.

This film justifies the entire career of Jean-Claude Van Damme. All the crappy movies. All the tabloid nonsense. All the personal excesses. Without it, this movie could not exist. You couldn't make it with Stallone or Schwarzenegger. You couldn't make it with Seagal or Norris or even Dolph Lundgren. Van Damme had to exist in exactly the way he existed for this motion picture to be made. It's a great story. Too bad the storytelling isn't.As you might guess from the title, Van Damme plays himself as an aging action star reduced to starring in idiotic crap. He's losing custody of his daughter. He's running out of money. His chance at a comeback is going to Steven Seagal. On a return home to Belgium, Van Damme gets caught up in a bank robbery at a post office. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. I guess in Belgium the post offices are also banks or wire transfer stations like Western Union. Anyway, the authorities think Van Damme is the one robbing the place and keeping the people in the post office hostage. That gives the three real robbers inside the idea of making Van Damme play that part as they try to figure how to get the hell out of there. As the post office is surrounded by the police and the police is surrounded by the media and the media is surrounded by cheering Van Damme fans, a man who really was an international movie star has to find a way through almost surrealistic circumstances and come out alive on the other side.JCVD is an odd duck in that it is an absolute must watch without truly being a great motion picture. Let me get into why that is before gushing over everything else. This film looks, feels and even sounds too stylish. The subject matter and the performance of Van Damme is simultaneously raw and complex and needed to be presented in a gritty, unadorned way. Yet both the structure of the script and the visual style of director Mabrouk El Mechri is too flashy and works too hard at being clever. From a non-linear plot to title cards breaking the story into segments to an overly theatrical killing, JCVD too often seems more like a conventional action thriller or some pretentious art house flick instead of a brutally frank examination of a fallen star. Maybe mimicking a Tarantino-like comeback vehicle for Van Damme was an attempt to add another layer of "meta-ness" to the whole production. If so, it was one layer too many.For example, the highlight of the film is this tremendous monologue from Van Damme about his whole life and the things that animated his rise and then his decline. His performance throughout the movie is incredible and this monologue is his spectacular peak. But instead of having the monologue take place within the confines of the story, Van Damme is literally elevated up out of a scene into the overhead lighting, where he talks directly into the camera. It's a phenomenal bit of acting, and not just because of the low standards Van Damme has set, but it totally shatters the sense of reality the rest of the narrative hangs on.It's too bad because this is a near brilliant narrative that pits the truth of Van Damme (in the context of this fictional representation of his life) vs. his own self-image vs. the image others project onto him. It depicts the irrational appeal and the impossible demands of celebrity. It makes you feel sympathy for someone who's been vastly more successful than you and then foolishly wasted all that opportunity. It is a profoundly sad story, every more sadly being told by people more interested in looking "cool".If you've ever loved, liked, hated or mocked Jean-Claude Van Damme, you need to see this movie. If you want to see the mythology of the action star deconstructed before you eyes, you need to see this movie. If you want to see a much derided performer prove he honestly deserved his time in the spotlight, you need to see this movie. I don't think I've ever seen another film as well made as this where I so deeply wish the filmmakers had made different creative choices. Believe the hype. JCVD is that good.