Emotional JCVD Unleashes the Van Dammage
If there has been a weirder idea for a movie in 2008 then the new French/Belgium production JCVD I’m not entirely sure I’ve seen it. This delightful import rustles up the ingenious concept of taking former 1990’s action heavyweight Jean-Claude Van Damme and plopping him square inside a Dog Day Afternoon style bank heist set on the streets of his own hometown. Mix in a bit of Hollywood satire, Fellini-esque commentary and a bit of self-mocking reflection and you’ve got one of the more entertaining and surreal melodramatic comedic thrillers of the entire year.
Jean-Claude Van Damme is Jean-Claude Van Damme in Peace Arch Entertainment's JCVD
After enduring a painstaking divorce and the subsequent custody battle involving his adolescent daughter, fading star Van Damme (himself) heads back home to Belgium to visit his parents. Down on his luck and flat broke, he enters a small bank to await a wire transfer from his manager only to find himself in the middle of a robbery. Next thing he knows the villains have got him speaking to the police as if he was the one masterminding things, the trio of incompetents threatening to kill their hostages if the Muscles from Brussels doesn’t throw himself body and soul into their little ruse.
The script by director Mabrouk El Mechri, Frédéric Bénudis and Christophe Turpin is tight, efficient and astonishingly emotional, the whole thing moving along with such enthralling vitality it easy to become captivated by it. The trio mix real stories of their star’s life and times within their fictional stew of chaos and captivity, all of it coming together with such tasty relish gobbling it up is nothing less than a fully satiating joy.
Personally, I almost couldn’t believe just how much I enjoyed myself viewing this one. At times laugh-out-loud funny and at others painfully melancholic and sad, the movie ebbs between blistering satirical highs and shatteringly sensitive lows with all the dexterity and grace of a piece of classical poetry. Sure it doesn’t always work (a lot of the bits with the befuddled police force assessing the situation fall completely flat, while the robbers' ultimate endgame is almost insultingly stupid) but that doesn’t make the film any less entertaining, watching it so much fun I almost didn’t want to it come to an end.
I’m not sure how the trio convinced Van Damme to be in this or what their connection to him was. What I do know is that it is a pity that the one-time martial arts superstar (known for high-flying hits like Double Impact, Universal Soldier and Bloodsport) hadn’t acted in his native tongue until now. There is a tenderness to his performance, a world-weary indifference and a weather-beaten sadness to his work that I never in a million years would have thought possible. Playing himself has freed him from the confines of his former B-movie banality, Van Damme forging a deeply personal bond with the viewer that nearly broke my heart.
I’ve never been what you’d call a fan of the actor (well, I do have a soft spot for Hard Target, and as that one gets it’s own satirical comeuppance I must not be the only one), but good golly miss molly if I knew he was capable of performances like this one I’d have been on the guy’s bandwagon ages ago. As silly as JCVD can be, and as all over the place as the narrative can get, watching Van Damme tap into internal wellsprings I never thought him capable of is about as sublime a treat as any I could have imagined. Talk about fists of fury, this is one time an aging icon’s last stand for attention and respect is one I can actually cheer about.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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