JCVD

When talking about Cinema it's doubtful that the names Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Claude Van Damme have come up in the same sentence all that often, unless it's to point out that Jean forms a bit of both their names. One is an exponent of hyper-kinetic filmmaking that changed Cinema whilst the other is Jean-Luc Godard (HA HA HA!). Lame puns aside, ol' JCVD has just went and played a beat-up version of himself, that judging by recent interviews, may not be too far from the truth, in a film that plays a lot like something that would have come out of the French New Wave.

Now I'm not a fan of that particular school of filmmaking, it was too up itself for my liking, but there's no denying its importance and many of the things that it influenced have been great, although they tend not to go as gung-ho with breaking the conventions of movies as those original films. JCVD does. In fact it positively revels in the creative freedom preached by those 60's Gallic flicks featuring a plot told in broken chronology, flamboyant camera work and an astonishing six minute monologue delivered to camera by the central protagonist. This scene alone is worth seeing JCVD for. Throughout the movie Van Damme plays a version of himself who appears broken, done in by a career that he is not proud of and that has now destroyed his family life. He's getting too old to keep doing it but it's the only thing open to him. The prospect that he may die in the Post Office heist he is caught up in makes him confront the choices he has made in life and the monologue acts as a confessional. His performance has already been striking up until this moment and the raw emotion he shows during it further proves that Van Damme may have all along been a brilliant actor forced into having to do action movies to make a living. The fact that he is also allowed to speak in his native tongue instead of the second language he usually does clearly helps him achieve this level of intensity.

In an attempt to sell the film to his usual audience JCVD has been made to look like an action film. Instead this is an arty European movie that plays like Godard making Dog Day Afternoon. It serves as an interesting character study of a man famous for a career he may not have ever wanted, the twist being that the subject of the picture is himself just that and happens to also share his name with the protagonist. It's by no means perfect but what JCVD is is an interesting curio that deserves to be seen by fans of Van Damme and those who have little time for him. No matter your preconceptions about him this film, and in particular his stunning performance, will go a long way to changing them.