Posts Tagged ‘JCVD’

J.C.V.D.

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

This is one of those things that almost seems too good to really exist. Did a talented French director really convince Jean-Claude Van Damme to play himself in an arty hostage thriller, giving him his best production values in years, one of his best movies, and definitely the best acting performance and most personal artistic expression of his career (so far)? Okay, I can believe somebody would come up with the idea, I can sort of believe Van Damme would be interested, but it’s hard to believe that they really found the money, really made it, really executed it this good. 2008, I love you.

This is the story of Jean-Claude Van Damme (Jean-Claude Van Damme), an action star getting too old to do long takes and depressed because he’s in a losing battle for custody of his daughter. The worst part: his daughter says she doesn’t want to live with him because everybody makes fun of her every time he’s on TV.

Jean-Claude goes home to Brussels, where he plans to stay with his parents and get his life back together. But he needs to get some money to send to his lawyers and just happens to choose a bank that’s in the middle of being robbed. So the thieves take him hostage, but instead of seeing him as a threat like they might in most action movies they just think this is surreal – holy shit, that’s Jean-Claude Van Damme! One guy in particular is excited and gets him to kick a cigarette out of a guy’s mouth. I mean, what would you do if you had Jean-Claude Van Damme hostage? I wonder why he didn’t try to get him to do the splits on a wall like he did in CYBORG?

The feel is more art movie than Van Damme, at times it’s even kind of pretentious, which you gotta kind of appreciate in a Van Damme movie. Never thought you’d be able to accuse him of being pretentious. The storytelling is very confident, bordering on cocky, some good non-linear tricks and unfolding the story from different perspectives. The soundtrack is nice and soulful, lots of horns used in the score, a throwback to action movies from the pre-Van Damme era. (more…)

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Posted in Documentary, Reviews | 57 Comments »

Bloodsport

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

Okay, now that J.C.V.D. has polished Van Damme’s plaque in the action hero hall of fame I can’t keep running from the inevitable, it’s time to go back and watch those early Van Damme pictures I’ve always ignored. I’ve already seen NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER, his first major role, so I’ll start with BLOODSPORT, his first starring vehicle.

BLOODSPORT is from Cannon, and it’s very much in the vein (get it, vein, BLOODSPORT) as other Cannon chopsocky pictures like AMERICAN NINJA and ENTER THE NINJA, or other ’80s chopsocky movies like THE PERFECT WEAPON. These are stories of goofy white dudes mentored by Asians to take on ancient traditions and become great warriors. They lack charisma, presence and acting ability but are good at martial arts (or at faking them in the case of Michael Dudikoff). In this one there’s not an evil villain to vanquish, just kind of an asshole who’s the one to beat in honorable competition. He’s played by Bolo Yeung of CHINESE HERCULES and ENTER THE DRAGON fame, so he’s mainly a bad guy because of his muscles and his facial expressions:

But Van Damme shows that he is a formidable foe by actually topping Bolo’s insane facial expressions. Without these faces it’s possible Van Damme would’ve never caught on more than, say, Jeff Speakman. I mean check this out:

That’s serious. That goofball there is Van Damme’s character Frank Dux (”like ‘put up your dukes’”), apparently based on a real guy. He’s a soldier for the U.S. who sneaks off to Hong Kong to compete in the Kumite, the legendary secret underground fighting tournament thing. He is pursued by 2 FBI agents (one of them played by Ghost Dog himself, Forest Whitaker) but not to bust him for going AWOL – they just don’t want him to enter the Kumite because he’s so awesome it would be a shame if he got hurt. Also there’s a gal with a bad perm who wants to have sex with him and write an inside story about the Kumite (she succeeds at both [also it shows Van Damme's ass {SPOILER}]). Meanwhile he has flashbacks where a kid playing Van Damme (accent and all) sneaks into a house to mess with somebody’s samurai sword. He gets caught and leaves without a sword but with a new best friend and a sensei. (more…)

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Posted in Martial Arts, Reviews | 11 Comments »

The Shepherd: Border Patrol

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

I don’t know if Sylvester Stallone forced them to step up their game, or if they all got together and had a meeting and decided to start putting more effort into this shit or what but lately all the old ’80s and ’90s action stars who are in exile on the small screen have started doing a better job. Seagal’s had a couple good ones in a row, Dolph’s have been watchable, Van Damme had that movie where he was a heroin junkie. None of these are yet matching the full potential of DTV, but at least they’re getting there. The latest in the trend is Van Damme’s double-titled THE SHEPHERD: BORDER PATROL.

I will go ahead and give the credit for this one not to Van Damme but to the director Isaac Florentine. I will have to investigate the guy’s works further but if he has anymore as good as this one and UNDISPUTED II then I think he must be one of the top DTV directors. He’s an Israeli martial artist who came to the U.S. and directed POWER RANGERS shows for years and then got into DTV movies like US SEALS II. And as far as the DTV directors go he has a real good style. His movies have hard-hitting martial arts scenes that are well staged, he uses some energetic but not hyperactive editing and camera angles to keep things moving and he has some odd touches here that suggest a sense of humor.

In this one Van Damme plays a New Orleans cop who has just transfered to the New Mexico Border Patrol. He’s introduced driving a car, shaving, and sharing carrots with a rabbit. His name is Jack and that is also the name of his rabbit, who he carries in a cage with him for much of the movie. So he’s got some little quirks that make him different from your standard issue Van Damme character. Also he looks funny in the uniform. The villain also has some eccentricities. He was a soldier in Afghanistan who got disillusioned after watching a suicide bomber explode, and now he leads a gang of ex-special forces soldiers in smuggling drugs over the border. Because of his experiences he uses suicide vests and explosive collars in his work. In one scene there are a bunch of topless babes in a pool and he keeps lighting small sticks of dynamite with his cigar and tossing them into the pool. A fun time. (more…)

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Until Death

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008

It’s always exciting to hear that a Van Damme or a Dolph or a Seagal is taking a risk, so here’s an exciting one. Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a heroin addicted, womanizing, fucked up cop. (He’s not totally dirty though, he won’t take bribes.) Most of the other cops kind of hate him, especially the guy who blames him for the death of his fiancee in an undercover operation. Van Damme’s wife is pregnant from her new man. And his former partner (Stephen Rea, believe it or not) is the crime kingpin he just can’t seem to bust.

Eventually Van Damme gets shot in the head and goes into a coma. When he wakes up he’s sort of born again and tries to make amends. He gives his settlement to a schlub he got kicked off the force. He stops shooting heroin. His wife is taking care of him while he recovers and they start to repair their relationship. If you haven’t figured it out yet this is a genuine drama, not an action movie. He doesn’t do the splits once.

The movie takes place in New Orleans and has some pretty good urban scenery. It has almost nothing in common with the Van Damme/New Orleans classic HARD TARGET, and he doesn’t try to do a Cajun accent. Rea’s character is named Callahan and he’s a former cop, so at first when they were talking about him it was hard for a brain like mine not to think it was a “what if” scenario for Dirty Harry Callahan if he went too far over the edge. But Stephen Rea is no Clint Eastwood so I dropped that idea pretty quick. (more…)

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Desert Heat

Thursday, March 23rd, 2006

DESERT HEAT aka COYOTE MOON or INFERNO

When I reviewed Jean-Claude Van Damme’s SECOND IN COMMAND on The Ain’t It Cool News recently I made a shocking admission: I haven’t seen a whole Van Damme movie since 1998’s KNOCK OFF. I understand if that means I lose credibility in some of your eyes, but I gotta be open and honest with you people. I’m one of them straight shooters, in my opinion. So I gotta admit it: I learn more and more about Steven Seagal every day, but when it comes to Van Damme I’m a straight up amateur. And I want to become a more well rounded person so I asked for some advice on the best movies from Van Damme’s post-theatrical days. Two people made convincing cases for COYOTE MOON, or DESERT HEAT as it’s called here in the states, so that was my first stop. (one guy described the plot, the other guy a threesome scene.)

DESERT HEAT is a weird-ass DTV movie from John G. Avildsen, the Oscar winning director of ROCKY. I’m not gonna bother to cross-reference but until somebody tells me otherwise I’m gonna assume Avildsen is the only owner of a Best Director Oscar statue who has ever directed a Van Damme movie. And for some reason, I don’t know why but he decided to play down his involvement in this picture and credit himself as Danny Mulroon. And then later it also says his name. Make up your mind Avildsen – are you ashamed or not? Keep your story straight.

Anyway the movie starts with a Seagalian quote about the coyote’s place in Native American legend, as Van Damme chases and surpasses a coyote on a motorcyle. He parks his vintage Indian motorcycle in the middle of the desert, swigs some whiskey and waves a gun around. Suddenly, a vision of the great Danny Trejo (playing a Native American) appears to him and tries to talk him out of killing himself.

It’s funny to see J.C. play drunk talking to a ghost, especially when he starts firing his gun randomly in the air. Somehow the bullets hit the truck of some sleeveless musclebound porn movie style cowboys named the Hogan brothers. They are one of two gangs that terrorizes the small town, somehow squeezing a criminal empire out of a town that seems to consist of one cafe, one bar, a hotel and some dirt. (more…)

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Second in Command

Monday, March 13th, 2006

Boys -

Most people around here know by now that I’m partial to the Steven Seagal pictures. And with The Steven Seagal Blues Band (who I think oughta be called “Steven Seagal and the Hard to Kill”) coming to Seattle in a couple months I probaly oughta be putting my Seagalogy studies into overdrive to prepare. But my New Year’s resolution for 2006 is STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE, and I intend to strive all year long. So I’m not gonna stick with what I know, I’m gonna start trying out new things, becoming a more well rounded individual. With that in mind I recently watched Dolph Lundgren’s directorial debut (Read it here!) as well as Jean-Claude Van Damme’s upcoming May 2nd release SECOND IN COMMAND.

Because of my intense deliberations on Seagal, I’m sorry to say that my Van Damme knowledge is out of date. In fact, the most recent Van Damme picture I’ve managed to watch all the way through was KNOCK OFF. That played in theaters, if that gives you an idea of how long ago we’re talking. So it was interesting to see what Jean-Claude is doing in the DTV medium.

In SECOND IN COMMAND, Van Damme plays the new military attache to the US ambassador in a country called Moldavia or Muldovia or something like that. Let’s just call it Syriana. It’s supposed to be a peaceful country, but he’s literally just off the plane, gets dropped off at the hotel for a quickie with his girlfriend when he hears gunshots in the lobby. I always thought because of DIE HARD’s ingenious detail that Bruce has to fight with no shoes on, it should be tradition for action heroes to get stuck in various stages of undress. This was a perfect setup for Jean-Claude to have to fight communist hardliners while wearing only a hotel bathrobe or towel, but I guess they’re saving that for if there’s ever a SUDDEN DEATH 2. (Which there oughta be.) (more…)

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Hard Target

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Well as you can see above, I reviewed John Woo’s HARD BOILED long ago. In that review I was obviously right about a bunch of crap that I said. For example, HARD BOILED is still a masterpiece. And as I predicted, CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON was a masterpiece that blew away the combined artistic merit of every American Chow Yun Fat movie times ten. But I was wrong that after the success of CROUCHING TIGER my man Fat would never do an american movie again. Back then I would’ve been happy to hear that but that’s because I never saw fucking BULLETPROOF MONK. Oh for crying out loud, what is the man doing?

Anyway, hindsight is 50/50 or whatever but looking back I think I should’ve focused my review more on John Woo. That’s the real tragedy is what happened to John Woo after we abducted him to American shores. The very next movie he did was this one, HARD TARGET. And man, this is not even a huge step down. It’s like, he just falls all the way down the stairs. I mean you can see similarities in the use of slow motion and everything but everything substantial about John Woo and his style is not here. And these days the slo-mo could be considered a bad thing now that we’ve seen it imitated for more than a decade. Anyway, this is a historic movie because it signalled the beginning of the importation of Hong Kong directors and the first known case of the legendary Curse of Van Damme, which would later strike Tsui Hark (2 times), Ring Lam (3 times) and Ching Tsu-Tung (the rare Steven Seagal variation of the curse). (more…)

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Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 8 Comments »

Double Impact

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

Well I thought this would be funny because Jean-Claude Van Damme plays twins but it is not one of his better pictures in my opinion. It is not nearly as boring as Cyborg, but it is pretty generic and dull and shows few signs of the iconoclastic action pioneer that Van Damme would later become.

I guess he does an okay job of playing two different characters for such a limited actor but you would think they would do more with the twin concept. The opening scene where jean claude’s characters is only a baby is pretty well done, but then it skips to 25 years later and the happy keyboard music plays and it’s just your usual mistaken identity twin garbage.

About 5 seconds into jean claude’s first scene he’s already doing the splits, in colorful spandex, for an aerobics class he’s teaching. Then he goes to hong kong to avenge his parents death and happens to run into his brother and find out his parents were killed. That is how it always is with these twins, either their parents died or they got divorced and they try to get them back together.

The plot and action are real routine, just a bunch of exploding and running around in the streets like an old cop show and not even very much kicking. They do this kind of crap in Vancouver Canada every day, it is called syndicated action shows that nobody you know has ever watched. There is usually a magic car or a super hero involved though instead of twins. (more…)

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Sudden Death

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

There are about three kinds of Jean-Claude Van Damme pictures in my opinion. There are the real experimental, artsy type like Double Team and Knock Off (the best kind), the real cheap and crappy ones like Cyborg and Double Impact (the worst kind), and the more expensive ones where he’s trying to become a more respectable mainstream action star (the kind that Sudden Death is).

I have a hard time reviewing this picture since it is an unofficial sequel to Die Hard. For those of you who don’t know I am a HUGE fan of the Die Hard pictures (starring Bruce Willis, look it up if you haven’t seen it) because, as a fan do I want to support this as part of the die hard mythos or should I not support it since it is unofficial, it is hard to say.

For legal reasons, McClane’s name has been changed to McCord, and he is being played by Van Damme instead of Bruce. He is now a fire marshall and instead of saving Hollie he has two kids going to the hockey game while he’s on duty. Hans Grueber (now played by a different guy) has planted bombs in the arena and has taken over the vice president’s VIP box seats. He’s gonna blow up the whole arena with everybody in it if the feds don’t transfer a whole assload of money to his bank accounts and what not.

Van Damme does not do the smartass oneliners that Bruce does, but he does a pretty decent job and he wears an undershirt like Bruce does. One complaint I think they should have shaved his hairline to make him look more like Bruce. (more…)

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The Films of Jean Claude Van Damme

Saturday, January 1st, 2005

I have seen a lot of talk about Jean Claud Van Damme on this news group so what i did was I decided to go out and rent some of his movies over at a “Blockbuster video” that they have here. i made a night out of it actually and so here’s what i think about this much discussed karate man.

First of all, body. Small but not that bad. The way he does the splits and everything kind of makes him look like a fairy but I bet he could kick a guy pretty hard. I’m still skeptical how long he would last inside but he’s not as weak as some of the pretty boys i’ve seen in movies. Put it this way I was surprised.

Secondly the movies though. These were actually some pretty decent flicks and which at times take a few tips from one of my favorites, Die hard. Die hard is a movie where Bruce willis (moonlighting and a lot of movies that are out now) is in a building to kill a group of terrorists. Bruce is on his own and, importantly, has bare feet. However he is able to take on all of them by himself. I believe this has been a great inspiration to a lot of inmates and to hollywood as well judging from Van damme’s films. The true influence of Die hard will probably be studied in a few years by academics as far as I’m concerned.

Surprisingly bruce is pretty tough in the movie. i’ve seen much badder but i wouldn’t neccessarily try to bend this guy over. He’s originally from comedy which is part of why it goes over so well as a character, there are jokes all the time where he insults the guys he’s killing. I think Van damme is also funny although please don’t get offended but i think sometimes it’s not on purpose! Though i’ve had a lot of hand to hand in real life obviously so i may be pickier than the average movie watcher. (more…)

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