The last thing I expected was to see a "washed up star makes a self-indulgent pseudo-apology" movie and thoroughly enjoy it. I have never liked a movie matching that description and especially didn't figure I'd like one starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. I'm certainly guilty of watching piles and piles of terrible martial arts action films in my time, but I've never pretended to forgive their formulaic, junk food nature.
JCVD finds the thoroughly unemployable and washed-up Jean-Claude scrounging for work and struggling to pull his life back together. Using a fractured chronology, we bounce around one particularly difficult day for him, which involves a bank holdup, in the middle of which he gets stuck.
I don't know what the release plans are for this in the USA, but I hope as many people as possible get to see Van Damme show off his considerable acting chops. You read that right, and you wouldn't expect it, but he's an extremely capable thesp in his native language. The best example is an out of nowhere direct monologue delivered to you the viewer at one point in the film, but that's not the only place, though that's where it comes the most naturally from his heart...honesty and not a put-on.
That's the piece of his performance most people will focus on from a critical standpoint, and the thing that left a friend and myself wondering something else we didn't have an answer for: when did he wake up and realize all this? Was it some sort of crisis intervention when he was neck deep in a pile of blow? Did he voluntarily go cold turkey off of all the indulgent, self-destructive pieces of his personal and professional lives? It could be we'll never really know. This one bit of the movie is so deeply heartfelt that I really can't fathom how it could be a put-on.
That bit, which non-actors might say was the "easiest" part for him, if you know any actors, you know it really is hard to get real honesty out of many them, on camera or off (or on stage or off, as the case may be).
Van Damme more than anything exudes weariness throughout the film. His career and life spiraling the drain have certainly taken their toll physically and mentally. He plays it with great care not to put up any of the facade he does day to day, and it takes genuine effort. He's beaten down like Rambo at the beginning of Stallone's fourth Rambo movie, like Solid Snake at the beginning of Metal Gear Solid 4 (not a movie, but a good analogue), and he knows he can't keep up this shit any more.
It's a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie I'll show my father and he'll complain there isn't enough action. My dad likes mindless martial arts action movies, and he actively had a part in keeping Van Damme coasting along on mediocrity throughout the 90's. I really hope more than anything that this attracts some risk-taking filmmaker to give Jean-Claude a chance to do something nutritious for a change.
I haven't read Inglorious Bastards, but there are French guys in that, right? I hope someone has shown this movie to Tarantino. Again, this review will possibly look like inspired lunacy until and unless you see JCVD, but I assure you with all certainty this is an actor trying to cinematically reshape himself and succeeding miraculously. I wish I knew where the idea came from: did he approach a director, or someone with a script bring it to him. The movie is enjoyable itself and it begs so many questions, you find yourself thinking and talking about it days and days after seeing it, as it has for me.
Speaking of, I have mountains of other writeups to get through that I'm behind on, so let's finish this one off.
The central performance is great, as are the people who become the epicenter of the "action piece" involving the bank hold-up and the hostage crisis that ensues. The film's resolution was very satisfying, and I think the fractured chronology works getting us there. It starts with the superficial POV and goes to the more subjective one of JCVD himself. Seek this one out at upcoming festivals and otherwise hope you get a chance to see it somehow.