Dir. Mabrouk El Mechri, Belgium/Luxembourg/France, 2008, 96 mins
Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Alan Rossett, Francois Damiens, Jesse Joe Walsh Review by Matthew Rodgers
The “Muscles from Brussels” returns from a career nadir with this tongue in cheek pseudo-documentary about a day in the life a superstar, who once had a cameo role in Friends . Now without a gimmicky twin storyline or a Universal Soldier sequel in the pipeline, he is reduced to playing second fiddle to Steven Segal in the direct-to-DVD market. “The studio has decided to go with Steven instead; He's agreed to cut off his ponytail”.
Compounding the reality of Van Damme's non-existent career is a legal battle for the custody of his daughter and mounting tax problems that have forced him to retreat to the relative anonymity afforded by his home country. That is until an innocuous trip to the bank ends with JCVD embroiled in a televised hostage situation and results in this self-deprecating, honest examination of a fallen star.
JCVD opens with possibly one of the most impressive sequences of recent memory, let alone any Van Damme film. Something of a low-key aping of the Children of Men tracking shot, the camera follows Jean-Claude as he kicks, jumps and improvises his way through an on-set action sequence of explosions and badly choreographed extras. Impressive as it is, it disappointingly sets a precedent that the remainder of the film never reaches.
In fact, JCVD is a movie of moments rather than consistent quality. Too often one is conscious of its limited talent and budgetary constraints. The siege sequences and their bickering cops are straight from any number of early 90s action movies, which is obviously the point, but they are not injected with any of the inventiveness of the aforementioned opening.
Van Damme himself is impressively understated, never the showman off the set, eager to sign autographs and frustratingly inept during the heist scenes, as he remains solemnly seated throughout. But it's in this chair that he has his “Hamlet moment”, as the action stops and he levitates into the air before addressing the camera for an impassioned five-minute confession to his fans, during which he actually cries. Now it's difficult to know the intended tone of the sequence as it moves from slightly awkward to genuinely captivating (it's hard to commit these words to page knowing that they are about Van Damme) but whatever your reading of it, it's memorably brilliant.
Worth seeing for a couple of stand-out moments, JCVD remains more of a fascinating oddity than a necessity.
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