JCVD

JCVD (2008)

Runtime: 97 minutes

Directed by: Mabrouk El Mechri

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Francois Damiens, Zinedine Soualem, Karim Belkhadra

From: Several different companies, including Gaumont

Here is a movie that ever since I first saw it on the big screen in the mainly arthouse theatre in the Orlando-area known as the Enzian I have hated, which goes against what many fans (especially action fans) and critics say, which is that it's great. I don't get it then why so many love it and after I watched it again late last night on Showtime Extreme...

To steal the plot from the IMDb: “Between his tax problems and his legal battle with his wife for the custody of his daughter, these are hard times for the action movie star who finds that even Steven Seagal has pinched a role from him! In JCVD, Jean-Claude Van Damme returns to the country of his birth to seek the peace and tranquility he can no longer enjoy in the United States.” That's part of it. The main part of the story is that Van Damme gets caught in a hostage situation at a local bank and he's made out by the loathsome (in the worst way) robbers to be the mastermind behind it.

Turns out, I may hate the movie even more now than I did before! It starts off fine as you see a low-budget scene being filmed with Van Damme and bizarrely, it's over the R&B song Hard Times, by Baby Huey, a massive 400 pound plus singer who had a great voice but sadly died real young due to a drug overdose. The song is great but I don't know if it fit the scene. It went downhill from there. 

You notice that for some reason the film's cinematography is a real washed-out colorless experience. I have no idea why this was done but it did not make the movie pleasing to watch. Everything has a gold sheen over it, and why would you do that for what's supposed to be a “realistic” look at Jean-Claude's life? The same goes for the jittery almost constantly moving camera, which I did not remember (but looking at a messageboard thread from the time, I DID note it) but now, it was bad. Then, you got a lot of misery as you get to see Van Damme in “real life” having a shitty life. Sure, in the past he DID have a shitty life; the biggest thing was he had a REAL bad drug problem in the late 90's which is why he vanished from the theatrical world and he did years of direct to video and DVD films, and his late 90's movies are either real strange or real awful. But, the way it's done is not entertaining at all; it's just there and not amusing aside from a few lines.

But what ruins it for me is where the crux of the movie takes place, in his home country of Belgium and he unwittingly is a part of the bank robbery. These villains... totally unappealing characters. They are villains in the worst way (and they are semi-competent at best, nearly constantly arguing with each other), to the point that you just want to turn the movie off. And yet real life Van Damme couldn't even try to take out one of those buffoons? They are more aggravating and obnoxious than threatening; then again the cops believe rather easily that Van Damme was the mastermind behind it. I don't get that.

Note that this isn't really an action movie at all. Rather, it's Van Damme being all contemplative and being all whiny and brooding about his life and how it is being middle-aged and blah blah blah... I know, many people apparently think it's hilarious that JCVD would be in an arthouse movie or that his performance wasn't bad. There's that but the story sucks, there's a lot of inconsistent stuff, the plot is a mess structure wise, the pacing is the opposite of good... and yet even though many people on Letterboxd note these issues, they still praise the movie! I do NOT get that at all. 

I was hoping that people would look down on this now once the novelty wore off, but apparently not. Sure, one of the villains looking like Severus Snape from the Harry Potter movies makes me laugh, but overall... screw this movie, to put it cleanly. It's ugly all around, from the tone to all the characters non-stop arguing and bickering with each other, Jean-Claude actually trying to follow the orders of those idiot crooks

Even a big bizarre surreal monologue Jean-Claude has at the end of the movie that everyone thinks is awesome... eh, no. It's more rambling nonsense than anything else. Again, why most people think this is awesome is a gigantic mystery to me. I just think it's arthouse Euro-douchy BS.

I'll be back tomorrow night as I discovered there's a movie on late tonight which I'll be watching.