JCVD

Odd little film. Jean-Claude Van Damme is a washed up action movie star, his
career is on the skids, he's out of cash after apparently having spent the last
of it fighting a custody battle for his daughter, who apparently doesn't
actually want to live with him, because he's an embarassment to her. He returns
to his native Belgium, and soon becomes embroiled in a post office siege, which
the police believe he's orchestrating. Just to make that clear - Jean Claude
Van Damme is playing Jean Claude Van Damme in this film.

So, the film runs along two lines, flashbacks to JCVD's pretty sad life which
led him to this place, and the present day, as he tries to navigate his way
safely out of the mess he finds himself in.

The film *appears* to be semi-autobiographical, what with Jean-Claude Van Damme
really having custody issues regarding his youngest son, and certainly seeming
prior to this film to be in career freefall and a complete laughing stock. I'm
not aware that he got involved in a Belgian post office siege, so it's not all
that autobiographical either.

It's a pretty good film. I don't know that he's a good enough actor to pull off
this kind of introspection and self-analysis, but on the other hand, its very
brave of him to do so, and the whole thing stands up as, if not a great film,
at the very least an interesting curiosity.

The most poignant thing about the whole thing, of course, is that despite being
an absolutely credible bit of European cinema, the presence of Jean Claude Van
Damme appears to have forced it into straight-to-DVD territory, and while I've
been keeping an eye on the listings of the local arthouse cinema for it, I
actually find it for ten quid on DVD in ASDA. The cover gives no suggestion
that it's anything other than a standard Van Damme movie, with lines like "WITH
A KILLER MIX OF ACTION, MURDER AND MAYHEM JCVD DELIVERS WITH THE IMPACT OF A
ROUNDHOUSE KICK TO THE FACE! VAN DAMME IS BACK AND THIS TIME HE'S TAKING NO
PRISONERS!" I don't know whether it's deliberate or not, but either way, it's a
supreme irony.

8/10. And the best thing Van Damme's ever done, bar none.