Film Festival Week 6: JCVD
Apologies for the one-week lapse in the festival, but due to the aftermath of the United States’ Independence Day weekend, the film festival took a short one-week holiday break. But it’s back, and with a vengeance! It’s family was murdered, and now it’s on a blood-thirsty search for vengeance with Jean-Claude Van Damme’s JCVD.
Of course, this isn’t any ordinary Van Damme flick. Rather than a bombastic action movie heavy on karate and explosions, it’s a comedic semi-fictional portrayal of the actor’s crumbling marriage, waning fame and disillusionment with life in general. When the actor becomes caught in the middle of a hostage situation, he finds himself dealing with the would-be robbers to protect his fellow hostages, while simultaneously brokering the negotiations with the police, who assume he is one of the hostage-takers. In a style largely inspired by French New-Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Goddard, director Mabrouk El Mechri creates a portrait of an aging action star that is simultaneously entertaining and endearing.
Also, considering the subject matter of the film, it is ironic that JCVD is Van Damme’s most critically successful film to date, the only one with a “certified fresh” rating on Rottentomatoes.com.
Table of contents for 2009 Robot Panic Summer Film Festival
- Film Festival Week 1: All the President’s Men
- Film Festival Week 2: The Wind That Shakes the Barley
- Film Festival Week 3: Dear Zachary
- Film Festival Week 4: Bottle Rocket
- Film Festival Week 5: Primer
- Film Festival Week 6: JCVD
- Film Festival Week 7: The Maltese Falcon
- Film Festival Week 9: Paris, Je T’aime
- Film Festival Week 10: Unforgiven
- Film Festival Week 11: Oldboy
- Film Festival Week 12: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
- Film Festival Week 13: Le Cercle Rouge
- Film Festival Week 14: Let the Right One In
- Film Festival Closing Ceremony
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Tags: film festival, jcvd, jean-claude van damme
July 14th, 2009 at 9:01 am
I watched this last week and have some mixed feelings about it. Van Damme comes off extremely well in the movie; very likeable. There are some truly funny bits in there, and I thought the running Steven Seagal joke was great. I also liked the caper feel to it, the almost “Dog Day Afternoon” feel it had (which is a fantastic movie). But something just felt missing to me. Maybe it was the lack of ass-kicking? Not sure. Some of the bits felt a bit too much for me. The opening scene where he’s filming that action scene was pretty great and a cool way of setting up the run-down Van Damme premise. But the monologue was a bit much, IMO. By the end of the movie, I just felt sorry for the poor guy. I mean, I realize though he was “playing himself”, he was still playing a character. But he was kind of pathetic by the end of it.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:06 am
I also saw this one last week, but my opinion is a bit different from John’s – I loved this movie, all of it. It immediately became my favorite Van Damme film.
I agree in that he was pretty pathetic by the end, but I think it went along with the rest of the movie, showing that Van Damme is just a normal guy like everyone else. The monologue was great: an unexpected break in the action, well-written, and directed in an interesting way (how he kind of rises above everything to say his part).
I really thought at first that Van Damme was the guy holding the hostages, like he kind of just broke or something and went crazy. I also loved the scene in the courtroom where the lawyer was going through all of Van Damme’s past movies as evidence that he’s a terrible person, and the wince on his face as the names are read.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
I saw this movie a couple months ago. I thought it was a great movie. I liked the fact that they pointed out and made a big deal about being “type-casted”. Certain actors, like Van Damme, are shoe-horned into certain roles over and over again. This doesn’t mean that they are bad actors. He showed in this movie that he can act. He showed that he can display real emotion. It doesn’t matter if he is playing himself because the story was fictional. This movie is actually the best movie I have seen in a while. Maybe I’ll be burned at the stake for this, but enjoyed this movie far more than most other movies in recent memory. It was a very simple story, but it felt real. It was acted very well, and it wasn’t outlandish. It showed him as a failed actor and all the emotional baggage that goes along with it. I think the robbery was the subplot, even though it was front and center. The real story was how his life was falling apart.
July 14th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
I really enjoyed JCVD. It felt a bit slow, at times. But, overall a real payoff for a risky decision on Van Damme’s part. Makes me wonder what he could have been doing with hs career this whole time. The monologue is, easily, the best part of the movie. I’d like to do more research on that part to see how it was written, and how much of it was Van Damme speaking the truth about his career/life. Kind of cast him in a different light, for me.
I will also agree that I would have liked to have seen more action out of this. It’s strange. I really liked the tone of this movie, and I think that cartoony violence would have cheapened that tone. I think I would have liked two movies. The one we saw, and a seperate one that was just a Naked Gunesque parody of JCVD. Anyway, great film.
July 17th, 2009 at 11:52 am
The spoof ending with the wicked JCVD roundhouse kick had me chanting along too with the rest of the crowd!
July 30th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
I didn’t think that the monologue was that great, I would need to watch it again in the subtitled version to really get a feel for it though (Instant had the dub).
I really loved the shot of him in the cab with the reflections through the glass. The cutaway shot where the police chief runs outside is also great.
Anyone else think the ending beat where he hits himself with the phone is really strange and not a good way to wrap up what was otherwise a great movie?