JCVD review

I remember when I was a kid, my dad and I would go to Blockbuster and rent a few Van Damme films and watch them endlessly until we had to return them. For Christmases or birthdays I would receive the newest VHS movie of his. My friends and I would watch them continuously and eventually the love of watching Van Damme would lead into me into martial arts. I wanted to be just like him. I gleefully mimicked his trademark snarl and yell, his one-liners, to me, he was a hero. He would get beaten down until the last few frames when he would miraculously reach deep down and find one last ounce of will and deliver that incredible round-house kick, which would defeat his foe.

I loved Jean-Claude Van Damme and to a child of the ‘80s and even in the early ‘90s he was my Steve McQueen. There was just a certain joy seeing his newest film in the theatre. As I got older, so did his career and I still remember browsing the aisles looking for a movie to rent when suddenly I saw my first Van Damme direct-to-video feature. The cover art was different. I never heard of the title. As much as it hurt me seeing my hero fade into that market, I cherished the time I spent watching him. Even though my tastes matured, Van Damme was and will always be the man.

JCVD opens with an incredible single take shot of Van Damme doing what he did best. Kicking, shooting, saving the damsel in distress and then a soldier knocks down a wall and the director yells, “Cut!” Van Damme goes up to this director, a young, uninterested punk and says “I can’t do all of this in a single take. I’m 47 years old.” That’s JCVD. He plays himself, a worn-out, fading action star, deep in a child custody battle and running out of cash. He’s forgotten in America but back in Brussels, where he was born and raised, he’s still a star. Luckily for some rag-tag robbers who hold up a bank he’s at trying to get an advance, they can use his celebrity status to their advantage.

JCVD is a good time and not for the action (there’s some) but for that matured tastes I acquired: a good story with acting. Van Damme strips himself down and reveals a lot. He’s playing himself, the film’s a parody or satire of his career and it all works coherently. Van Damme is damn good here, especially his long monologue which while achieving the film’s theme, also is a confession from the action star which is a heartfelt sentimental retrospect on his life and career. The director frames him squarely in the center and lets him go. This truly is the best scene of the film.

The rest of the film is pretty good too, mostly shot in a soft, picturesque focus, Brussels is an inviting town and the pacing is adequate also. The robbers are comical, a parody of the Dog Day Afternoon guys and the film rips and has fun with some of the career moves and films in Van Damme’s career. “Who cares if he brought John Woo to Hollywood.” The occasional subtitles are hard to read as they are white and there’s a lot of light in the film that conceals some of the text. The film is broken up in four sections, each with a Van Damme saying that some might be bored with but as it passes it all makes sense. Everything in the film serves towards Van Damme and the film’s advantage.

JCVD just might be his swansong in cinema. There’s this scene in which he dreams up this scenario in which he beats the bad guy and is adored by fans clapping and worshipping him. Even in his dreams like the one’s we’ve shared with him, the one’s I had, it’s revealed that he too is just like us. As the credits rolled, I smiled. My hero had just return, if only for 96 minutes, it was 96 minutes in which I was 10 years ago again throwing punches at the same time he did, seeing that larger than life hero win in the end. When I got home, Bloodsport was on and it seemed perfect again, as I settled in for my Van Damme marathon like I did all those years ago.

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