Review of JCVD (2008) by Sean P — 15 Nov 2009

Can a Van Damme movie be good? With his long career of cheesy action flicks, JCVD comes as an unexpected and pleasant surprise. It is NOT an action movie, despite the gunfire and fights that are there. Instead, it's a dramatic film with humorous scenes poking fun at Steven Segal and even the Muscles from Brussels himself.

Jean-Claude plays, well, Jean-Claude in this fictional world where the star loses his daughter in a custody battle and fights not only to make some money, but also make something great from a dying career. He returns to Brussels and heads to the post office expecting a transfer of cash that he will use to pay his lawyer. After pleading with the "employees" to do anything they can to help him, he is hit in the face and discovers he's walked into a robbery. The dim-witted robbers decide to use the star's fame to their advantage to cover their escape.

All of the ridiculous things that are going on around Van-Damme aren't very important. We've seen these things in a thousand similar movies before. What's important the performance that he delivers here. At different times in the movie he's sad, frustrated, even heartbroken; and it's so organic that it doesn't seem like acting at all. Near the end of the movie, he literally rises above the film set and delivers a monologue that (scripted or not) is actually moving.

While it's not a great film, JCVD is definitely far better than anything else Van Damme has ever done.