Review: JCVD

First of all, if anybody out there is still reading, apologies for the month-plus disappearing act. College has consumed my soul in such a way that I haven't even been able to write a movie review, which is indeed a sad day. However, I'm back, and with a lot to rant and ramble about.

First off, we have the film "JCVD," which is short for none other than Jean Claude Van Damme, your favorite ass-whupper from Brussels and mine. Now, some people can remember the time during the 1990s when Van Damme was a worldwide action star, and even more probably remember him as the man who introduced John Woo to Hollywood (and by extension, a lot of doves in action movies.) Sadly, though, most know him as the man he is today; a former drug addict who does hilariously bad straight-to-DVD action flicks that, if lucky, are aired on the Sci-Fi channel.

With "JCVD," Van Damme has done something incredibly ballsy, something that merits a great deal of respect. He takes his own mythology and pisses all over it. Most actors are too afraid of taking that step and being able to laugh at their own career, for fear that it will render them a joke, and they fail to realize that they more or less are already. In confronting everything said about him head-on, Van Damme snaps back at all the naysayers.

The film starts off with one of those Van Damme action sequences, with a ton of gunplay, karate and men being killed by JCVD's bare hands. However, the action cuts away to reveal a set, where Van Damme is being mocked by the director for taking his mediocre, cash-in movie too seriously. He plays himself in the film, and not in the winking "Julia Roberts playing Julia Roberts" way of the "Ocean's" series. Van Damme is playing himself with all his flaws in tow. He goes to the court hearing for custody of his daughter, and after watching the opposing attorney rattle off a list of all the violence in his movies, his daughter says that she wants to live with her mother, because kids at school make fun of her dad's movies. His agent tells him that he lost out on a STD role to Steven Seagal, because the latter promised to cut off his ponytail for the first time.

After this, and out of money, Van Damme returns to Brussels to try and start again. While simply trying to drop off a letter at the post office, he ends up being roped into a hostage crisis. A police officer sees him in the window and becomes convinced that Van Damme is robbing the bank. He's so far in debt that the police don't even question whether there is probable cause for the stickup. Inside, Van Damme uses his fame to stay alive, but also begins to fear his own death.

If this sounds heavier than a Van Damme movie should be, that's because this is not the kind of movie one would expect. There's actually next to no action in the film, and the toughest Van Damme looks is during the aforementioned scene in the beginning. Van Damme plays himself as a man broken down, who almost wants to relinquish his fame and start his life over, but can't escape the hole he's dug for himself. There is a scene, beautifully handled, in which he levitates above the onscreen action, looks into the camera and directly addresses the audience. For about ten minutes, he tells his side of his story for what seems like the first time, and apologizes for the wrongs he has caused. It's hard to tell at first whether this is part of the movie, but then you realize that it is not; he speaks of his past wives, his drug use and all his other failures with a candor that few other actors would have the courage to exhibit.

Strangely enough, I can see "JCVD" possibly acting as a new beginning for the actor, if he so chooses; this film crushes the Van Damme mythos so thoroughly that if he truly wishes to start again, he may have more films of a higher quality in him after all.