JCVD (2008) - 80%
Jean-Claude Van Damme is at a turning point in his life. Making shitty films just to meet his alimony payments, he decides to return to his native Brussels and begin again. Things don’t run quite so smoothly however, as he is thrust into an armed robbery and hostage situation - exactly the kind of scenario he has encountered so many times, but this time the gun to his head isn’t filled with blanks and there is no choreography. He’s lauded as a hero in this town for his onscreen abilities, but when he is an ordinary guy with fears and worries of his own, how will he react?
The film is more than just an exploration of the disparity between an action hero and his real self, but an odd kind of one-man show from Van Damme in which he exorcises demons and shows that he’s actually a damn fine actor.
Here we see Van Damme so far out of his usual role, but so deep into his element. In his native tongue - the movie is in French - and playing a semi-fictionalised version of himself, Van Damme is in control, funny and likeable. He, naturally, fills the role perfectly, in fact causing Time magazine to hail it as the second best performance of the year - after Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight.
Redemption is found within JCVD for all those straight-to-VHS musclefests and ludicrous plots. There is a depth of personality and humour heretofore unseen from the eponym, as he struggles with sleep deprivation and a deeply bizarre set of circumstances. Often he is given the chance to escape; the robbers invariably give him an easy ride because of the admiration they have for him, and he is if anything treated as an equal. The movie Van Damme would roundhouse one of them, grab the other’s gun and be out by lunchtime. But our real, flesh and blood Van Damme is drowning in self-pity and threatens to drift off entirely. All of this culminates in a surprisingly provocative six-minute one-take monologue, in which he discusses his failures and his shortcomings, he mentions his drug problems and ultimately empty direction in life. Essentially he conveys a level of self-knowledge otherwise unseen to a casual Van Damme fan such as myself, and one can only leave the movie feeling much closer to him as a person.
80%
