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JCVD
Belgium / Luxembourg / France 2008
produced by
Marc Fiszman (executive), Jean-Claude Van Damme (executive) for Gaumont, Samsa Film, Artémis Productions, Radio Télévision Belge Francophone
directed by Mabrouk El Mechri
starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Valérie Bodson, Hervé Sogne, Rock Chen, Huifang Wang, John Flanders, Renata Kamara, Mourade Zeguendi, Vincent Lecuyer, Jenny De Chez, Patrick Steltzer, Bernard Eylenbosch, François Damiens, Pascal Lefebvre, Jacky Lambert, Norbert Rutili, Olivier Bisback, Armelle Gysen, Karim Belkhadra, Jean-François Wolff, Michel Bouis, Raphaëlle Lubansu, Claudio Dos Santos, Zinedine Soualem, Anne Paulicevich, Hyppolyte Eloy, Alan Rossett, Saskia Flanders, Jesse Joe Walsh, Bella Wajnberg, Jérôme Varanfrain, Caroline DonnelyEric Boever, Liliane Becker, François Beukelaers, François De Brigode, Gregory Jones, Paul Rockenbrod, Dean Gregory, Alice Hubball, Steve Preston, Janine Horsburgh, Isabelle de Hertogh, Ingrid Heiderscheidt, Fjoralba Cuni
idea by Frédéric Taddeï, Vincent Ravalec, screenplay by Christophe Turpin, Frédéric Benudis, Mabrouk El Mechri, music by Gast Waltzing
review by
Mike Haberfelner
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Jean-Claude Van Damme's career has gone down the drain, he has just
lost a trial over custody of his daughter (Saskia Flanders), has lost a
movie role to Steven Seagal because he has agreed to cut his pony tail,
and he owes money to his lawyer (Alan Rossett). On top of that, he has
just arrived in Belgium to find out all his bank cards are revoked. To
relieve his money situation, he goes to a bank, incidently in his old
hometown - and walks right into a bank robbery, that with his arrival
evolves into a hostage situation. The problem is that the cops arriving at
the scene think he's the hostage taker, and the actual bankrobbers decide
to go with it, figuring Van Damme's voice would have more weight than
their own. Of course, this only leads to more chaos as Van Damme fans come
filing the streets chanting his name, while on the inside, the bankrobbers
start arguing. Only late in the game does Van Damme try to take the
bankrobbers out, but that's much harder than in his movies, and
ultimately, he manages to resolve the situation, but still gets one year
in jail because over the course of the whole affair he tried to embezzle
money to pay his legal bills ... Jean-Claude Van Damme was one
of the major stars of macho action cinema that pretty much dominated the
1980s but went out with a fizzle by the mid-1990s, and he has since made a
string of movies that left hardly any impression, like fellow action stars
like Sylvester Stallone, Steven Seagal or Dolph Lundgren. So quite
honestly, and without wanting to sound judgmental, nobody expected
anything special from Van Damme in 2008 ... and then, with JCVD, he
became the first meta-action star - something that would help define his
later career, especially through his TV-series Jean-Claude Van
Johnson. Now all that said, JCVD is not really a
masterpiece, more a fun subversion of genre tropes with Van Damme seeming
to enjoy to play the worst version of himself and vivisecting his screen
image as a whole in the process. At the same time, the film focuses a bit
too much on just Van Damme, and could have been more entertaining if some
of the other characters were given some development (or some, erm,
character, really), and the whole situation would have given more
attention, rather than just Van Damme's involvment in it. Also, the whole
film's colour scheme of mostly washed out browns and greens seems to try
to signal a little too hard that this is intended to be art rather than
your typical Van Damme flick, but it's simply not fitting the general,
lighter tone of the movie. That all said, it's still a pretty amusing
film, it just falls short of what it could have been.
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eThaiCD.com
find JCVD at adultvideouniverse.com
