JCVD (2008)

In the midst of all the Oscar hooplah surrounding Mickey Rourke's performance in The Wrestler last year, another comeback by an 80s/90s movie star in a similarly hyper-self aware art film kind of flew under the radar.

JCVD, a Belgian film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as himself, was pretty universally praised by all four or five people who managed to see it in theaters. The critics, in particular, went positively apeshit. Entertainment Weekly gushed about its supposed similarities to Being John Malkovich, Roger Ebert called it "surprisingly transgressive," and the Portland Oregonian saluted Van Damme's "...angry, vulnerable and occasionally devastating performance..."

Many critics singled out the actor's six-minute, tearful monologue near the end of the movie: a tour-de-force piece of cinematic eye candy that meanders through JCVD's family problems, the troubles besetting his career, his drug addiction, his fear of death, etc. "I've done nothing!" JCVD bellows, snot dripping from his nose and tears squirting from his eyes. Nice work, particularly considering who it is we're watching. It really kind of is a sight to behold.

For the record, though, the monologue is my least favorite part of the film. Beyond the "holy shit" factor of recognizing that it is, in fact, Jean Claude Van Damme sitting there, I just didn't buy it. This is not a criticism of Van Damme's performance, which really is pretty extraordinary throughout the film. I tried to imagine how I would feel about the scene if it was another, more "legit" actor (say a Sean Penn or a Christian Bale) delivering the exact same speech, and I decided that -- at the end of the day -- it just didn't work. The writing is forced. The moment simply isn't earned, and it threw me completely out of the movie.

So there's the contrarian in me finding something to hate on. But that's all I've got. This is by no means a perfect film -- certainly not as powerful as The Wrestler -- but it really is shockingly good.

JCVD, in the movie, is a washed-up 47 year-old action star reduced to doing cheap, direct-to-video action movies in far flung Eastern European countries (in point of fact, every single one of Van Damme's movies between 1999's Universal Soldier: The Return and JCVD has gone straight to DVD). He's trapped in a bitter battle with his ex-wife over the custody of his daughter, who clearly wants to remain with her mother (supposedly this actually was the case with Van Damme's son). He's broke, and tired, and not quite the physical specimen he used to be. There's a bravura, single-take movie-within-a-movie action sequence that opens the film and which cleverly climaxes with a piece of the set toppling over, Buster-Keaton style, and the disengaged Japanese director calling for another take. JCVD, exasperated, whines about how difficult it is for him -- an over-the-hill actor -- to complete even one take, let alone two. The director, unmoved, simply sits there behind the monitor throwing darts at a picture of the Hollywood sign and prattling on, through an interpreter, about the "symbolism". JCVD stalks off in disgust.

When JCVD returns to Belgium for a much-needed vacation, his lawyer informs him that his last check has bounced. JCVD calls his agent to see if he can get an advance from the producers of his next project, and the agent tactlessly informs him that said producers decided to cast Steven Seagal instead because Seagal promised "to cut off his pony tail" for the role.

His back now firmly up against a wall, JCVD wearily poses for a photo with a couple excited video-store clerks and then goes across the street to a post office. Shots ring out moments later, and a police officer sees what appears to be the movie star blocking the entrances and taking hostages.

So has the Muscles from Brussels finally snapped?

To say more would spoil a wonderfully intricate plot that alternates almost seamlessly between gritty crime drama, action movie, dark comedy, a devastatingly pointed deconstruction of JCVD's persona and his place within popular culture, and -- finally -- a quiet and remarkably unobtrusive rumination about what it means to be a hero in the real world versus the movie world.

Like The Wrestler, what makes this movie work is the honesty ... yes, honesty ... of the lead performance. Director Mabrouk El Mechri clearly has a hard-on for Martin Scorcese and Paul Thomas Anderson, and he favors long, unbroken takes and carefully choreographed StediCam shots to Michael Bay-style rapid editing. This allows Van Damme to really sink into the role.

Two quiet scenes stand out. One involves JCVD berating his agent for his short-sightedness, and the other has JCVD sitting in the back of a taxi and being chided by the driver for his "rudeness." In both of these scenes the camera remains completely still and never once cuts away from Van Damme's face. Both times the actor manages to deliver a performance that feels breezy and tossed off in a way that looks easy, but that any real actor will tell you is actually brutally difficult to pull off.

El Mechri is clearly an actor's director as much as he is a cinematic stylist, and all of the other performances are consistently strong. The two video store geeks and the curmudgeonly taxi driver border on caricature, but they are the only real dissonant notes to be found. Everyone else in the movie -- from the people in the post office to JCVD's parents to his sleazeball agent and his weary lawyer -- does solid work. I particularly enjoyed Francois Damiens (a French actor who happens to be a dead ringer for the young Richard Dreyfuss) as the police inspector tasked with coaxing JCVD out of the post office. His is the role that, in a lesser film, would be played with maximum Pacino-style bluster. But Damiens approaches the part with a light and laconic touch that serves as an anchor to a story that could easily have found itself drifting into ludicrousness.

Like most movies of this type, the plot doesn't really hold up to logic once one really stops to think about it. But that doesn't matter. Like The Wrestler, this is a movie that lives or dies based on the lead performance. And that performance is more than strong enough to bear the weight of whatever minor flaws there may be in the script.

My worry about JCVD is the same worry I have for The Wrestler. I fear that audiences and -- maybe even more importantly -- producers and filmmakers are going to dismiss these performances as one-offs or anomolies, and won't give either Rourke or Van Damme the chance to shine again in another like-minded movie. It would truly be a shame if Van Damme -- who, I believe, has now more than proved himself as a real actor with some actual talent (who knew?) -- is kicked right back into the straight-to-DVD action movie ghetto that he's inhabited for the last decade.