JCVD B+

On DVD, Rated R, 98 Minutes, In French with English Subtitles

Van Damme can act!?! Turns out the Muscles from Brussels, now years past his mid-nineties hay day, has one more trick up his sleeve: real, honest-to-goodness acting chops. In JCVD you won’t take your eyes off him. From the opening long, continuous shot of an action hero flipping fighter after fighter to the bone-weary, beaten man that looses custody of his daughter, Jean Claude Van Damme lives up, maybe for the first time in his acting life, to his ridiculous, exaggerated name.

Here’s the deal: Van Damme plays himself, a karate-fighter turned actor whose once bankable star-power has seriously diminished. After yet another divorce, and robbed of his family, he heads back to Brussels where he’s still popular to be with his parents and re-launch his career. His manager’s pushing him to be in straight-to-video action films, but he wants to work at union wages with legit directors to prove he can act. Stopping for cash at a bank, he accidentally walks into a robbery, which he subsequently is believed by the quickly gathering press and police to be leading. In a scene reminiscent of the Michael Jackson trial, large crowds of supporters, alerted by TV, gather to chant and support him even though they believe him to be a thief.

The structure and script is Charlie Kaufman-lite (taking a little from both Being John Malkovich and Adaptation), with some scenes shown non-sequentially and from multiple perspectives. This device works pretty well, but isn’t as clever as the film-makers want to believe. Eventually the robbery, which escalates to involve hostages, gets a little stale, with the thieves becoming more violent and more desperate than makes sense. What does work against all expectations is Van Damme’s ability to project himself as a tired, thankful, in some ways repentant, and basically decent human. He says things about himself and his career no one else would have the guts to say. Then in an interesting prayer/soliloquy aimed at God and the audience, he talks about the women and his children and the money and the drugs. Along the way the film examines what the audience wants from its movie star, and what the movie star wants and needs from the audience, and the disappearing line between reality, art, and entertainment.

The script is by Frederic Benudis and Mabrouk El Mechri, who also directs, neither of whose previous work I was familiar with. The direction is a little uneven, but El Mechri shows a flair for the money shot as witnessed in the long opening take and the long prayer which involves an interesting lift shot, giving the allusion that Van Damme is floating up through the ceiling as he’s talking. For some, this film might not work, but it totally worked for me. B+