[JCVD Movie Poster]

JCVD (2008) – Plot summary

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.

I don’t know what other people think of when they think of Jean-Claude Van Damme.  But I think of mindless action flics.  I love them.  If they have a plot and the action makes sense then I consider them the height of cinematic wonderful.  Jean-Claude Van Damme doesn’t come to mind as an actor who has done a lot of movies that have a plot.  Actually, I think, story lite.

But hey, who isn’t entertained by a short, but good looking, arrogant foreign man kicking some ass for a couple of hours?  JCVD is about ten times more plausible than Universal Soldier, a movie I enjoyed.  But of course, it was silly.

Blah, blah.  So why will I probably watch this movie ten more times, aka every time it ends up on cable tv re-runs.  The way the film moves in and out of present time and memory is brilliant.  You get a feeling of frustration from Van Damme.  But it is also funny.  Because how ironic is it to be held captive and demonstrating how to karate kick a cigarette out of someones mouth?

You can tell that Van Damme finds his stage name, the autograph signing and photographing kind of silly.  But he’s a good sport, and poses and smiles.  I found it amusing the number of times he had to introduce himself as Van Varenberg, you know, Van Damme, you know… Hollywood.  That cracked me up.  The shrug and grimace and holding back of a rolling of eyes was great. 

And he complains some about movies with no plot and the unfairness of life – why is he famous and some more talent people impoverished.  He appears to be a real person.  And there is a scene where a person says the television reporter out front looks much better on tv, which adds to the concept of how unreal the movie star image really is.

I watched JCVD streaming on Netflix, on my 10 inch Asus while doing household chores.  I may actually get a proper dvd and watch it on the giant tv.  Let me tell you, I never do that. 

I would love to read comments from anybody reading this post about how you feel about the subtitling and the constant back and forth from French to English and vice versa.  I like to turn off the subtitling of French films whenever possible (usually not possible with North American dvd).  So I’m sure my watching experience is not typical.

[Belgium]

As a side note, I think of Belgium as really cold and grey.  I recently watched In Bruges.  And that film also seemed black and white, because everything looked kind of grey.

Oh, and I love the quotes about the eggs.  Very French.  I read a review where the reviewer panned the quotes as inscrutable and pretentious.  But I find them quite typical.

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• Van Damme Movie