JCVD (2008)

"He'd still be shooting pigeons in Hong Kong," says one of the players In JCVD about director John Woo's debt to action star Jean-Claude Van Damme for their 1993 collaboration, Hard Target. Making that film may have been JCVD's greatest contribution to modern cinema although the current film with his initials in the title is more interesting than any previous kick-butt martial arts flick of his I can remember.

The story's framing device is Van Damme's fictional character of the same name unwittingly becoming a hostage in a bank robbery where his inability to extricate himself and the other hostages is a commentary on the impotence in real life of the mythical hero on the screen. The gritty, de-saturated look inside and outside the bank reminds me of the urban realism of Sidney Lumet's bank-heist Dog Day Afternoon. There's even a stringy-haired thug, but Van Damme is no Dustin Hoffman.

In this satire of his mercurial career as an action star, Van Damme ironically manages a mini-Mickey Rourke comeback by expressing feelings for his daughter and for the lost glamorous life of the Muscles from Brussels. His taciturn, expressionless persona is exactly what the satire needs to move it from a comedy about celebrity to a serious attempt to throw his identity into the existential arena. Indeed one long take in which he tearfully philosophizes about his troubled life is either ludicrous or a rather nice reflection on the vagaries of fame, albeit low rent. The other long take during the titles shows the aging hero fighting his way through a gauntlet of bad guys in a current movie. It's not bad given how bad Stallone could be in the same situation.

Van Damme has had real-life difficulties getting custody of his daughter and righting his tax problems, so JCVD is an apt imagining of his troubles. At some moments he does quite well taking his acting where it has never gone before. That he recently lost a role to Stephen Seagal, who agreed to cut his pony tail for the part, is less an indictment of Jean-Claude than it is a commentary on the vagaries of showbiz heroism.

"Sic transit gloria mundi."

Fmovies: I saw it.

I will be quick 'cause I'm so tired (1 am here) but I know that my dreams will be funky...because the film is funky. I was at the avant-premiere tonight in Paris where Jean-Claude and the team introduced the film to the crowd. He was very cool and fun.

The film ? Simply hot (not that hot), funny and touching. And I cried, yes really, like a sissy girl, I cried during his long speech (you will understand when you will see the film, but JC summarizes his life and it's a magic moment). I don't want to spoil the film, but to me it's great one in his career, very mature, well written, many private jokes for us, well directed, well played (Jean-Claude is simply awesome like you never saw him before), many many fresh things, scenes, and moments. It's a heist film, maybe a small heist but a big film who swims on Dog day afternoon, Clerks and Rashomon, Tarantino mood with flash-backs, flash-forwards (the editing is hot), a very nice sound track (very Enter the dragon's Lalo Schrifrin)....

I didn't like Fellows films, The HardCorps, The Shepherd, but I LOVE his last film, so fresh, I love JCVD the movie.

I want to see it again this week-end. Mabrouk, JC, thank you...

The story, I wont tell, you know it. So, no spoilers ! The "Van Damme" = this is what i'm gonna review. Van Damme got mature. Van Damme has stories in his eyes. Van Damme has life in his eyes. Van Damme has sadness in his eyes. Van Damme has regrets in his eyes. Van Damme has stuff to say to the world, to his audience. Van Damme have a message to deliver. He does in JCVD.

In JCVD, we see for the first time Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg, the man, amazing ! Not the character, the real man ! You can feel it from the screen. wow, very cool feeling I had.

The context of the film help Van Damme for telling the truth about his bad moments in life/career and conclude them. This movie close the bad Van Damme, it is a reborn. A therapy film for Van Varenberg.

The jokes (humor) is very well done, van damme can be very funny in his language. The action scenes are "real style" shouted. I liked it a lot. Good kicks in this film, few, but good, so powerful, the sound effects are awesome.

The monologue is astonishing, so Oscar winning performance ! Van Damme has secret about his daughter Bianca, stories....it is not easy to be a father (as an action figure) for a daughter. The relation between a daughter watching her "normal" dad in his Hollywood life/career is not easy.

Van Damme is really back on track.

JCVD The Movie : 10/10 Jean-Claude Van Varenberg, the most human-actor in Hollywood. 10/10

JCVD fmovies. I just saw this movie at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montréal (Canada), and allow me to tell you that it's a must see film for everyone. I'm a big Van Damme fan and I have all the films he ever made so I'm gonna concentrate my comment around Van Damme. The first thing I'll say is that this movie is his best and possibly one of the best movies of the year. Going to the theatre, I wasn't expecting a masterpiece, after all it's Jean Claude Van Damme and you see his movies for the action and his high kicks not for his acting. But the director made all the difference in Jean Claude's performance. The concept itself helps a lot. Van Damme is playing himself, so he's not playing one of his stereotyped roles. Furthermore, him speaking in his native language made a huge impact on his performance. He's more natural and more authentic which made him more credible. Compared to all other movies he appeared in, this is a revelation. The comedic tone of the movie is also something to be noted. The jokes are well done but what makes the difference is the jokes focused on Van Damme. The reference to his roundhouse kicks are just hilarious. Two moments especially shine in this regard. The first one is the demonstration in the post office and the second one happens towards the end of the film. You just can't miss them and they have that good old classic Van Damage feel to them. Also worth mentioning are his personal goofy quotes in french. The one when he's interviewed by a french journalist who asks him about the total of 1+1 will leave you breathless. Not to mention the courthouse sequence which was so funny. But the best moment of the movie remains his monologue to the camera. For five minutes, or so, he goes back to his life. He talks about how he believed in the American dream, his drug and marriage problems, how Hollywood screwed him up ,how he wants so bad to be granted a second chance etc. It's a classic cinema moment in all senses. It felt more a confession than anything else. It was moving and genuine and you can feel the human being behind The Muscles from Brussels image. The other thing to be noted is the long shot at the beginning of the movie. It was hilarious and it summarizes in a sense all of Van Damme's career: Gunfights, high kicks, goofy acting you name them. In the end, the direction of the film really sets it apart from any other Van Damme's movies. The director knew how to get the best of Van Damme and put together a film that felt genuine and true. However, some questions remain. What's Van Damme going to do from now on? Will he be recognized as an accomplished actor? Will he get scripts that show him more as a human being rather than a bulk of muscles? Will he be making more European films rather than keep on making straight to DVD films? I can't say, but one thing remains for certain: JCVD is the rebirth of JCVD.

There once was a naive young men from the slums of Brussels full of hope and passionate with love seeking his way in life and making his dreams come true by becoming a Hollywood movie star. Boy oh boy, did things turn out to be different from what he expected. After once being type-casted as a martial arts B-movie star, he became easily outdated and in time just food for ridicule. After being walked all over by numerous people he trusted, including the women he loved, and after allowing one of these women to get him introduced to an illegal and addictive substance, he continued to do downhill.

The rise from a simple Belgian boy to Hollywood movie star and the subsequent fall from grace turned the once naive young man into a wise old man. Having seen much of the world and lived both a life of poverty and pain as well as a life of luxury and hedonism, this man has seen it all and done it all. And now he's back with a vengeance.

Of course, the man I'm talking about is Jean-Claude van Damme. Disappointed about the rats and vultures that populate Hollywood, he decided to go back to his roots, pay respects to his homeland and hope he's still welcome there to attempt a new career in movies. And boy oh boy, his first attempt seems promising.

Jean-Claude van Damme showed the world he can actually act and he made sure that everyone watching this film understands why he was involved. His disgust towards the media and the Hollywood movie industry just radiate from this film, but not in arrogance but rather in all modesty and with regret, clinging on to the values and principles once taught to him by his parents and his Karate teacher when he was still a little boy living in Brussels. As a fellow Belgian, I pay respect to this man and hope his second movie career will be better than his first.

Bonne chance, Jean-Claude.

There's some word combinations that you simply can't envisage together. "Jean-Claude Van Damme can act" is one of them. Yet, remarkable as it may seem, the Muscles from Brussels turns in a truly career turning performance in JCVD.

Directed and co-written by Mabrouk El Mechri, JCVD manages to capably straddle art house, action and comedy genres as it captivates the viewer by laying bare the soul of the star of such DVD fare as Bloodsport, Streetfighter, and Universal Soldier, to name only a few.

Largely based on his real life troubles, JCVD unfolds as Van Damme retreats to his native Belgium in the wake of a losing child custody battle in a Los Angeles court.

Mounting financial troubles have left our hero with over-maxed plastic and debit cards that no longer yield ATM withdrawals. Forced to tap into his savings reserves, he makes a pit stop at a post office/bank to arrange a money wire transfer to pay his lawyer, only to discover that the bank is in the process of being robbed and he's stuck in the midst of the drama.

To make matters worse, the manner in which things have unfolded has caused authorities and media alike to believe that Van Damme is the mastermind, orchestrating the heist and hostage taking to pay his legal bills.

Segmented into chapters and shown out of sequence, similar to Pulp Fiction, El Mechri manages to deftly juggle laughs and tension to deliver a film that uniquely straddles several genres, including breaking the "fourth wall" with an eight-minute long monologue in the film's third act that sees the muscle-bound Belgian recap, with painful tear-inducing pain, his life of cheesy movies, women and drugs.

Think of Dog Day Afternoon in which Pacino gets to speak to the audience and lay his soul bare and you've got an idea of what's in store with JCVD, which, if there's any justice, will do for Van Damme's career what Tarantino did for Travolta's. Especially now that we know JCVD can act.