[Blu-Ray Review (R2)] JCVD
Believe the hype! Embrace the buzz! Seriously!
Never ever, ever, ever did I think I’d be writing what I’m writing about this film but everything you’ve heard is true – it is all shades of ace! Remember when you first heard the concept of Bruce Campbell’s My Name Is Bruce and you thought “Man, that sounds friggin’ awesome!” and then you seen it and it was pretty damn good, but it just didn’t live up to the idea you had in your head of Bruce Campbell playing Bruce Campbell fighting demons? Well, JCVD should fall under the weight of its own meta-concept and should get crushed to pieces by the ton of internet coverage it is getting regarding just how “great” it is. But it doesn’t!
It really is THAT good.
The concept is so bizarre – heist movie, Dog Day Afternoon homages (check out the ‘look’ of the main villain and tell me that they’re not going for a visual ode to John Cazale’s Sal?), Jean Claude Van Damme playing Jean Claude Van Damme, six minute ‘confessional’ one-take monologues – that many will come to this thinking it is a sort of ‘joke’ movie but… but… Again, I can’t really believe I’m saying this, but it REALLY isn’t!
Opening on a positively sublime, one-take film-within-a-film shot of ‘JCVD’ filming a new movie, we follow the actor off the set at into his own life as it stands at that moment. Between his tax problems and his legal battle with his wife for the custody of his daughter, these are hard times for the action movie star who finds that even Steven Seagal has pinched a role from him! With money troubles mounting up around him, Van Damme returns to the country of his birth to seek the peace and tranquility he can no longer enjoy in the United States but finds himself walking into the middle of an armed robbery of a post-office where, through a quick confused turn of events, the police outside come to believe he is executing himself.
What you’ll take away most of all from this film is that, now don’t laugh, Van Damme can act. Seriously. The dude has “chops”. And I’m not talking about just in that infamous six minute monologue either. Look at the final scene – played almost entirely without dialogue. Look at his reactions, his body language etc. The man has talent. Who the hell would have thought that eh? You certainly wouldn’t have got that impression if you’d survived The Hard Corps or Street Fighter.
Everyone is talking about this in the same sentence as Being John Malkovich and, as masterful as that movie is, there’s something a little braver going on in JCVD. Malkovich was playing a caraciture of himself in that movie so he had the licence to just let Spike Jonze and Charlie Kauffman go hell for leather on the image THEY created on the back of him. Van Damme has things a little more difficult. He has to play against his own reality.
Whilst this is the lesser movie when compared to Being John Malkovich, Van Damme is having to suffer through an exploitation of the fame HE greated for himself in actuality. There’s scenes in which we hear interviews he’s given in the past (that have been resoundly and rightfully mocked for being inane, pompous and non-sensical) played in the background on TV and we see Van Damme catching bits of them and almost visibily shuddering at the embarrassment of them. There’s also a lovely realised moment in which he and one of the hostage-takers talk about John Woo, Hard Target and Van Damme tries to defend Woo but the hostage-taker sees Windtalkers as his “punishment” for not making more movies with the legendary “JCVD”.
Massive kudos needs to be extended to director and co-writer, Mabrouk El Mechri, who absolutely blasts it out of the proverbial park with this film. He shoots in a saturated, almost sepia tone, breaks the fourth wall in a manner rarely done successfully and balances the absolute absurdity of the endeavour so superbly that we are left with no choice at all but to just buy what we’re being presented with.
Blockbuster, after a string of complaints allegedly – I can only speak for my two local stores, have started putting big homemade stickers on the cover of JCVD with the words “This film is in subtitles” as, according to one manager, “all the fans of his stuff are pissed that it is foreign”. No, this is not your typical Jean Claude Van Damme straight-to-DVD movie (even though, despite its acclaim, it is bizarrely being released straight to DVD here in the UK, outside of London) but, come on, that’s most definitely a good thing is it not?
I strongly, strongly recommend you don’t disregard JCVD. It’s not a dispensible “joke” movie. It’s a visually interesting – and looking utterly magnificent on blu-ray, thoroughly entertaining, quite enigmatic and suprisingly moving little gem. It really is.
I leave you with Van Damme himself. One take. No script. Straight to camera. Sobbing at the state of affairs he has put himself in. He’s never ever going to be this good again, but then did anyone ever truly think he could’ve been this good in the first place? Over to you JCVD:
“… This movie is for me. There we are, you and me. Why did you do that? Or why did I do that? You made my dream come true. I asked for it. I promised you something in return and I haven’t delivered yet. You win, I lose. Unless… the path you’ve set for me is full of hurdles where the answer comes before the question. Yeah I do that. Now I know why. It’s the cure, from what I’ve seen here. It all makes sense. It makes sense to those who understand. So… America, poverty, stealing to eat… stalking producers, actors, ‘movie stars’, going to clubs hoping to see a star, with my pictures, karate magazines. It’s all I had. I didn’t speak English. But I did 20 years of karate. ‘Cause before I wasn’t like that…
[points to flexed bicep]
This… this is me today. I used to be small and scrawny. And I took up karate. Hence the Dojo, hence respect, thou shall believe people who say, “Oss!” It’s Samurai code. It’s honour, no lies. So this guy in the US, it’s not the same thing.
No one says “Oss” to you. Sometimes people in show business say, “We’re gonna’ fuck em’”. I believed in people, in the Dojo. I was blessed and had a lot of ‘wives’. I always believed in love. It’s hard for a woman with three kids to say, “Which one do I love more?” A mother… If you have 5, 6, 7, or 10 wives in a lifetime, they’ve all got something special, but no one cares about that in the so-called media. What about drugs? When you got it all, you travel the world. When you’ve been in all the hotels, you’re the prima donna of the penthouse. And in all hotels the world over, travelling, you want something more. And because of a woman… well, because of love, I tried something and I got hooked.
Van-Damme, the beast, the tiger in a cage, the “Bloodsport” man got hooked. I was wasted mentally and physically. To the point that I got out of it. I got out of it. But… it’s all there. It’s all there. It was really tough. I saw people worse off than me. I went from poor to rich and thought, why aren’t we all like me, why all the privileges? I’m just a regular guy. It makes me sick to see people… who don’t have what I’ve got. Knowing that they have qualities, too. Much more than I do! It’s not my fault if I was cut out to be a star. I asked for it. I asked for it, really believed in it.
When you’re 13, you believe in your dream. Well it came true for me. But I still ask myself today what I’ve done on this Earth. Nothing! I’ve done nothing! And I might just die in this post office, hoping to start all over here in Belgium, in my country, where my roots are. Start all over with my parents and get my health back, pick up again. So I really hope… nobody’s gonna’ pull a trigger in this post office… It’s so stupid to kill people. They’re so beautiful!
So, today, I pray to God. I truly believe it’s not a movie. It’s real life. Real life. I’ve seen so many things. I was born in Belgium, but I’m a citizen of the world. I’ve travelled a lot. It’s hard for me to judge people and it’s hard for them… not to judge me. Easier to blame me. Yeah, something like that…”
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