"JCVD" had me at its opening scene. A wildly over-the-top action scene with much typical Van Damme ass-kicking (and accompanied by a Curtis Mayfield tune) is followed by Jean-Claude walking off the set, heading straight for the director, a young, talentless hack, to complain about the filming. The director says to his interpreter in Chinese: "Just because he brought John Woo to Hollywood doesn't mean he can rub my dick with sandpaper", and the interpreter gives a nonsense excuse about how not having a gun preserves the character's integrity. It's funnier than anything in Ben Stiller's industry spoof "Tropic Thunder", and certainly far closer to reality.Thankfully, the rest of the film does not disappoint. The film's conceit is clever: Van Damme's dislike of the films he works on is clear, he's got an awful, typically Hollywood agent (at one point Van Damme asks what he's working on next, to which his agent replies "Feel No Injury, it's about a Vietnam vet who...", Van Damme assures his agent that they shot that film several months ago and his agent responds by looking through his papers and offering a corrected response, "Feel No Injury II, it's about a gulf war vet..."), has basically become a joke and knows it, and is fighting for custody of his daughter. The next step after these establishing scenes is, naturally, to put the 'real' Van Damme in a situation right out of a movie he might have starred in- he gets stuck in the midst of a hostage situation at a bank, while attempting to make a withdrawal to pay his lawyer. The twist? Everyone outside the bank, including the police and a huge crowd of fans, believe he is the one taking the hostages, and in this scenario Van Damme is powerless, unable to just kick and punch his way out of it.
Going into the film I had expected an entertaining, slightly angsty meta-narrative about Van Damme in a hostage situation. What I got was something far funnier, far more thrilling and involving, and certainly far more genuinely emotional than the film probably had any right to be. The in-jokes are fun ("if it wasn't for you he'd still be shooting pigeons in Hong Kong", "... well, at least he made 'Face/Off'"), several scenes are genuinely suspenseful, but most surprising of all is that the film features one of the greatest scenes in years: just past the hour mark Van Damme faces the camera and delivers a lengthy soliloquy on why he made the movie, why he decided to take up karate, and expresses his feelings on celebrity, his own image, women, drugs, and Hollywood. It's bordering on ridiculous, but how can anyone laugh when Jean-Claude Van Damme is baring his soul on camera and actually crying? The scene either proves that Van Damme is not as limited an actor as most think he is, or that there was no real acting involved.
The cinematography, specifically the lighting, will bother some people but I thought it was quite good, and El Mechri is a fine director, who juggles the comedic and dramatic aspects of the film as well as the thriller side of it successfully. Van Damme's performance is, for my money, the best of the year, challenged only by Clint Eastwood's potential acting farewell in "Gran Torino" and Sean Penn's surprisingly effective turn in "Milk". While I don't expect much agreement, "JCVD" is my second favorite film of 2008, just after "My Winnipeg", and one of the most enjoyable viewing experiences I've had in quite some time.
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