Film is Pwn

As a devout Christian, I am occasionally compelled weigh in on theological questions on short notice.  For example, I remember working in a kitchen many years ago when the staff was gossiping about gospel singer Kirk Franklin who had reportedly fallen off a stage and hurt himself, and the consensus was, “Boy, he must have sinned!”  When asked if I agreed, I told them to read the Book of Job and get back to me.  No one got back to me, but no one equated “pain = God’s punishment” again.

Now people are pressing me to determine if Jean-Claude Van Damme appearing in a legitimately fantastic, critically acclaimed movie is one of the signs of the apocalypse.  I have read Revelations a time or two, and am here to assure the public that a Jean-Claude Van Damme film is not referenced as a harbinger of doom outside the recently discredited New Ebert Translation.

The film prompting this end of days paranoia is JCVD, wherein Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a washed up movie star named “Jean-Claude Van Damme,” who is down on his luck, going through a messy custody case, just lost a film to Steven Seagal (that dastard!), and is desperate for money.  Van Damme is back in his native Brussels, graciously takes a few photographs with fans, walks into a post office, and minutes later the post office is being robbed.  The robbery becomes a hostage situation and the police believe Van Damme is the culprit.  But is he or is there more to the story?  (Dramatic music here.)

Even though I knew full well that JCVD had a positive buzz, an intriguing trailer, and the DVD cover carried a pretty radical quote from TIME Magazine (“HE DESERVES NOT A BLACK BELT, BUT AN OSCAR”), I had my doubts.  Can you blame me?

The closest to character development you got in a Van Damme flick was Van Damme’s character kicking different people for different reason at different times in different ways, but it would always involve kicking.  The bad Van Damme movies have either been unwatchable or so-bad-they’re-good.  No offense to Van Damme, who I’ve always fancied to be an affable chap, but even his legitimately entertaining movies (Sudden Death, Timecop, uh . . . any others?) fall into the fun/bad category.  And there was the thick Belgian accent to contend with as well, wherein Van Damme pummelled the English language with every bit the ferocity he did his stuntmen adversaries.   As Michael J. Nelson wrote of Van Damme in his book Movie Megacheese: “World peace is too important a job to be left to someone who pronounces it ‘warald piss’.”

Of course, my second language is Spanish, and I speak barely enough of it to order a chicken sandwich en Espanol at Chick-Fil-A – and even that feat of linguistics cannot be accomplished without emphatic pointing at the menu – so who am I to mock someone who’s starred in dozens of films in a foreign tongue?  But one of the charms of JCVD is that about 15% of the dialog is in English, the rest is in French with English subtitles, and it’s not surprising that Van Damme seems much more comfortable in his native tongue.  Yes, Virginia, there are subtitles in JCVD, which means this is likely the only Jean-Claude Van Damme movie that the illiterate will not enjoy.

As much as 30% of the film is improvised according to writer/director Mabrouk El Mechri, and very few of Van Damme’s lines were scripted.  The result is an amazing, raw, and authentic performance that includes a mesmerizing, touching soliloquy from Van Damme that blurs the line between fiction and reality.  For this one-take, lengthy monologue punctuated by streaming tear, Van Damme speaks directly to the audience in the middle of the hostage crisis as he is slowly elevated above the set until you can actually see the stage lights above.  As the monologue concludes, Van Damme is lowered back to the set where the film resumes as if the movie star had not just been magically transported to another plane of existence where he bared his soul to phantom viewers.  The scene is jarring but staggeringly effective.

I don’t know if I’d have nominated Van Damme for a Best Actor Academy Award, but it sure would have been fun to see him rush the stage on Oscar night and give one of those spin kicks to Sean Penn.

Actually, now that I think about it, Van Damme’s feat deserved an Oscar nomination more than Mickey Rourke Wrestler resurrection, because Rourke was always a great actor who self-destructed and had to work his way back to earning quality material for him to show off his stuff; there was no indication that Van Damme had the capability or the inclination to pull off a bonafide great performance, and yet here it is.

For those of you expecting Van Damme to reinvent himself as a serious thespian, I hate to be the one to tell you this but according to imdb.com, Van Damme is currently filming Universal Soldiers: The Next Generation.  Even if Jean-Claude doesn’t make another great movie, at least he’s got this one.

–Daniel J. Roos still plans to make fun of the really bad Jean-Claude Van Damme movies in the future.  How can he not?  Replicant is still out there, somewhere, waiting . . .

Other Jean-Claude Van Damme movies blogged by Daniel Roos thus far in his quest to review all JCVD films before his death:

• Street Fighter (1994)
• Double Impact (1991)
• Hard Target (1993)
• Universal Soldier: The Return (1999)
• Nowhere to Run (1993)