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JCVD - The Movie Review
I don't know which is the bigger shocker: Jean Claude Van Damme pulling off a late night cult movie - playing himself - or that the UK distributor, Revolver, failed to capitalise and give this terrific movie the theatrical release it deserves?
It doesn’t really matter. The fans will discover JCVD for themselves, if not on the big screen then on DVD – which is home away from home to the “muscles from Brussels” anyway.
In a performance as sympathetic and engaging as Mickey Rourke’s in The Wrestler, Van Damme plays Van Damme, a hero on the streets of his hometown in Belgium, where he’s visiting his parents, but also an aging action star whose career seems headed for a black hole. He can barely keep up his alimony and child support payments. Even the taxi driver on the way in from the airport gives him a tongue-lashing.
Cast details
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Jean-Claude Van Damme
Born: 18 Oct 1960
Berchem-Sainte-Agathe, Brussels, BelgiumTop rated films View all Kung Fu Panda 2 - Blu-ray (2011) 
Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) 
Still, things can get always get worse. By pure coincidence, Van Damme goes into a small bank at the very moment it’s being help up by armed robbers. He’s taken hostage along with the staff and a couple of customers. Outside, though, the media and the cops jump to the conclusion that he is one of the hold-up gang. The crooks have their own problems – one of them is a blood-thirsty sociopath; another is a Jean Claude fan, and even asks for his autograph – but whatever way you look at it the actor is in a pickle.
JCVD: Jean-Claude Van Damme
This isn’t your typical Van Damme movie, that’s for sure. It’s not a glossy Hollywood movie either. I imagine cowriter-director Mabrouk El Mechri will end up there soon, but for now he’s working with limited resources (and a not so hot cinematographer), and making a virtue out of necessity. He shows what he can do in the opening scene, a virtuoso long take traveling shot with Van Damme on the rampage. It’s just a little off ¬ the blocking is slightly clumsy; a prop wall shakes. But all that turns out to be intentional, simultaneously a piss-take of the kind of cheapjack action movie Van Damme has been reduced to, and of a certain kind of over-eager film school graduate director, much like El Mechri, I’m sure.
The structure teases out the incident from four or five different perspective with Tarantino cleverness. It’s all very contrived of course, but the overt ingenuity is part of the package. It’s a movie that winks at us – and then (who would have thunk it?) bares its heart.
I don’t want to spoil it – and I’m not talking about plot details here – but there is a scene so wild and unexpected and outrageous, but also so exposed and honest and true, it’s absolutely breathtaking.
For five or six minutes Jean Claude opens up to the camera and puts us in his head. It’s a brilliant monologue, and it will change the way you think about Van Damme for ever, as an actor and as a man. How much of it is autobiographical, and how much is scripted I don’t know for sure, but boy, does he nail it!
On a personal note, I interviewed Jean Claude once, back in the late 80s. He was candid and unpretentious, but slipped a little easily into Hollywoodese. What I remember most is his obvious enthusiasm for movies. Not just his, but movies generally. He raved about King of New York, and how happy he was that Christopher Walken had found such a great vehicle… Raved like a fan. That was touching and it stayed with me.
I have to say I’ve been more than happy to avoid most of JCVD’s movies over the last two decades, but happier still to report that he has found a film as good as this one, and that he’s the best thing in it. How strange that the role he was looking for should turn out to be playing himself. Funnily enough, according to The Internet Movie Database, the original Francophone title in his place of birth is Le Roi des Belges: “The King of Belgium”.
JCVD - The Movie Reviews
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