How ‘JCVD’ Prompts a Fascinating Re-evaluation of Jean-Claude van Damme’s Career
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Regardless of appearances, Van Damme is able to excess of simply senseless action.
The story of Jean-Claude van Damme is just not at all times essentially the most uplifting of ones. From his humble origins rising up in Brussels, dreaming goals of changing into a well-known actor whereas working as a florist to help himself, to his success as some of the iconic action stars of his time appears like precisely the type of rags-to-riches story Hollywood would write itself.
His choice to pack up his issues and transfer to America in pursuit of his dream, working quite a lot of odd jobs to make ends meet whereas often incomes bit roles in low-budget movies, solely to lastly strike gold after six years of hardship with the discharge of his breakout movie Bloodsport, is stuff even essentially the most coldblooded of individuals can discover inspirational. However, as real-life so typically reminds us, there’s no such factor as fortunately ever after. By the mid-Nineties he had developed a critical drug behavior, and a string of behind-the-scenes controversies (mixed with a closely typecast picture) put a dampener on his profession.
By the flip of the century his profession largely consisted of bland straight-to-DVD releases that relied solely on nostalgia for a bygone period, hardly the stuff of Hollywood gold. Exterior of that, his popularity for colourful proverbs on a variety of matters (resembling his notorious brag about with the ability to crack walnuts together with his buttocks) have made him the topic of a lot mockery. That younger child from Brussels could have achieved his objective of Hollywood stardom, however it in all probability wasn’t the idyllic paradise he’d hoped for.
It’s precisely this fractured dream that varieties the idea of JCVD, a 2008 crime drama that boasts not solely Van Damme’s best efficiency, but in addition serves as a captivating examination of his profession and the plight of changing into a well-known actor. The movie, a meta-fictional drama directed by Mabrouk el Mechri, sees Van Damme taking up essentially the most difficult position of his profession: himself. Van Damme, an out-of-luck actor who’s at the moment shedding a custody battle for his daughter to his newest ex-wife, finds his state of affairs going from dangerous to worse when he finds himself embroiled in a put up workplace heist in his hometown of Brussels.
However this plotline may be very a lot only a basis from which to investigate Van Damme as an individual, with all his previous digressions (resembling his aforementioned drug dependancy or his declining relevance in mainstream movies) being laid naked in all their unwavering torment. It’s a courageous choice for Van Damme to look in a task that’s as unflinchingly brutal as this, however the end result is among the most compelling movies about movies ever made, and one which proves that Van Damme is able to excess of simply senseless action.
The opening of JCVD establishes the movie’s thesis completely. Barely one second has elapsed earlier than Van Damme has deployed his signature kick on an unsuspecting guard, with the digital camera then pulling again to indulge the viewers with a formidable one-shot action scene as he slaughters his approach by an enemy guerrilla camp. It’s a sequence that evokes recollections of the Vietnam Warfare opening from Common Solider, considered one of his most profitable movies, however it’s additionally one which exists for extra than simply inane violence. In actuality that is nothing greater than a movie set, and the thrill of the earlier minutes shortly disintegrates when Van Damme begins arguing with the director about how demanding it’s for a virtually fifty-year-old actor to carry out all these stunts in a single unbroken shot.
Not that the director cares, since he appears extra involved about throwing darts into an image of the Hollywood signal (hardly essentially the most delicate piece of images) whereas complaining that his lead actor nonetheless thinks they’re making the subsequent Citizen Kane. It’s a second that completely encapsulates Van Damme. He’s an actor with an unquestionable love for cinema who desires to make movies he could be happy with, however his popularity for showing in tacky action movies means he’s caught remaking the identical movies over and over. It’s arduous to shake the sensation that Van Damme has had this actual dialog with lots of his administrators, and it lays the groundwork for the bitter self-reflection to come back.
It additionally serves as the right transition to the subsequent scene, a courtroom listening to for custody of his daughter that Van Damme is shedding badly. His ex-wife’s lawyer argues {that a} man whose profession revolves round such violent movies (which entails working down a guidelines of all of the methods Van Damme has died in considered one of his movies, all of which seek advice from a real movie) is ill-suited to boost a baby. Van Damme tries to defend these roles by saying they put meals on his household’s desk, however his phrases fall on deaf ears.
The argument that violent movies encourage real-life violence is as outdated as cinema itself, and one that may proceed to be debated for a few years to come back, however to see the impression it has on an actor lengthy after the digital camera has stopped rolling, somebody who was merely following phrases on a script earlier than turning of their costume and going residence, illustrates a tragic aspect to Van Damme that even his most ardent of followers could have ignored. After all, that is nonetheless only a movie, and it’s essential to do not forget that this can be a piece of fiction that opts to seize the essence of Van Damme’s profession moderately than specializing in particular incidents that truly occurred, however scenes resembling this echo his life with such horrifying accuracy that JCVD can really feel nearer to a documentary at factors.
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