JCVD - Jean-Claude Van Damme

Jean-Claude Van Damme

The Muscles from Brussels. First thought to get out of the way: my GOD that man had a big arse. He’s an era, a generation, a genre, a bona fide and full-blown phenomenon. There was nothing like him and never will be again, whether for good or bad.

My first Van Damme film was Blood Sport (1988), followed closely by AWOL (1990), then Death Warrant (1990)[3]. The Van Damme craze blossomed whilst I hit my (naturally quite bleak) teenage years. For some reason, my life seemed to attract a lot of martial arts and martial artists, so Van Damme was also rather topical. I watched just about every martial arts film ever to grace the stands of my local video store, including all of the ones with Bruce Lee, Brandon Lee or Jackie Chan in them – and let’s no forget Eric Roberts in the cinematically awful but paradoxically brilliant martial arts film Best of The Best (1989).

But Van Damme was something different. The fact that he was a Frog (OK, Belgian, but come on, same difference[4]) probably had something to do with it, since I had spent my childhood in France. But there was more to it than that. True, his physique was unusual for a leading actor, but not unique – Schwarzenegger had been strutting the scene for quite a while. What made Jean-Claude unusual was that he had the body of Schwarzy but the head of a pretty boy and the eyes of a puppy dog. Then there was the fact that he was a ballet dancer too, which I think lent that grace to his moves that no other martial artist can lay claim to. Altogether, it was a recipe for epic martial arts success, and one that attracted an enormous audience by virtue of the fact that it appealed to both male and female viewers – no small feat in itself.

Bloodsport, the first film that really brought Van Damme international renown, was just a whole new experience for me, and watching it with the boys definitely elevated a girl's status in their eyes.  It was like your brain switching off all its higher intellectual and critical powers for an hour and a half. Plot, characterisation and general logic? Who cared! Martial arts had never, ever been presented quite like this. And as viewers, all we could think about was seeing those incredible kicks. Those great repeat-cuts that made it look like he’d kicked the guy three times in a split second when in fact it was just once.[5] Then there were those wicked slowmos  with Van Damme’s grimaces of effort, the distorted roars from the slowed-down audio, the sweat, spit and blood flying off in all directions, the muscles vibrating like guitar strings with every impact… solid. The motivation of the character was one-dimensional and simple: survival. Now that, at the time, made perfect sense to me.

Then with AWOL, all of a sudden the muscle-bound fighting machine had a heart – a big (and incredibly cheesy) one. God I must have watched it 30 times. Some years later that film became even more real to me when I found out that my boyfriend actually was AWOL from the French Foreign Legion (yes, seriously). The whole AWOL plot was one big (actually, a little anorexic) mush-fest, but no less enjoyable. It was oddly comforting to find that a big, strong guy like that could yet find himself in worse trouble than me. I was also fascinated with the fact that he cared so much about people he didn’t even really know and who certainly didn’t want him around, just because they were blood relations. Family meant everything to him - and I couldn't quite decide whether this was the most unrealistic part of the whole plot...

Then there was Death Warrant. What a great, great film. It actually explored a relatively untouched but very clever idea – that of a cop going into a prison undercover. Plenty of inherent conflict in that premise. The Sandman, played by Patrick Kilpatrick, is hands-down one of the most credible criminal nut-jobs of that day. The set-up: a dangerous prison environment with a mysterious organ collector on the loose who might get you at any moment with an ice pick to the back of the skull while you sleep. Both chilling and believable. The fight scenes, as per usual, were outstanding, especially the final showdown with The Sandman.

As for the love interest – this one left an indelible mark on my libido. The choice of girly was interesting (Cynthia Gibb). She wasn’t the usual “piece of ass” that you would expect to see in a muscle film. And although Van Damme and Gibb get very little time to develop any kind of rapport (he spends the better part of the film behind bars), somehow it kind of works – I think due in no small part to Gibb looking positively besotted without having to twitch a muscle (maybe she had a crush on him in real life?). The brief love scene at the end had me totally convinced and, I'll admit, a little hot under the collar.

Then there was the silly Double Impact (1991) featuring two equally ridiculous versions of Van Damme as twin brothers[6], the blockbusting Universal Soldier (1992) with the Swede Dolph Lundgren cast as the baddie, and a host of other films, most of them turkeys. Van Damme seemed to disappear from my radar altogether, apart from a brief blip as Rachel’s love interest in Friends (nice one). Then nothing – all quiet on the Van Damme front…

…until 2008 and the very unexpected release of JCVD. A small-budget, strange little piece set in Belgium portraying the miserable life of a has-been martial arts movie star (surely the real life story of Jean-Claude himself). The setting is rough, the filters grimy, and Van Damme’s appearance matches the environs to perfection: “Wow” is the first thought that runs through your head when his mug fills the screen – that guy has not aged gracefully.^[7] He looks like a seriously f***ed up ex-boxer, but somehow I suspect the ravages were not caused so much by the kicks and punches of martial arts opponents as those that life dished out. He looks wrecked, and so incredibly tired and forlorn. To be honest, whether or not intended, this initial portrayal of the martial arts legend immediately secures your interest and sets the mystery for the film. What on earth happened to him? The reviews all say it isn’t biographical, but the detailed revelations of the “character” are so mundane, unflattering and realistic that they blow that theory right out of the water.

The action of the film revolves around the robbery of a shitty little post office in a shitty part of Belgium (by the looks of it anyway – perhaps the whole country is like that, I wouldn't know).^[8] And in the middle of this unlikely little heist, we have the most unexpected scene. Van Damme breaks the “fourth wall”^[9] in a peculiar one-shot, six-minute camera tour de force, and what comes forth leaves you slack-mouthed and stunned: OMG – Van Damme can act! No, I mean really. An Oscar-worthy performance, as hailed by many of the critics. AWOL's hammy sentimental acting is replaced by a raw and gritty breakdown that has you almost too embarassed to look. Jean-Claude cries. He laments his pathetic life. He recalls the sad story of his dwindling descent into the world of a drug addict. In a long monologue that no one could possibly memorise, Jean-Claude comes clean and talks for real. It's a bit like a bucket of ice water in the face. An enormous amount of credit should go (and has gone[10]) to Van Damme for having the courage to bare his warts to the world.

Other than that, JCVD is replete with wry (but often laugh-out-loud) humour, especially in the way that he is treated by “fans”. A scene that particularly stuck in my mind and made me swear never to completely rule out the possibility that there just might be a crap side to stardom: Van Damme gets into a cab after a god-awful day, in no mood to talk. The cabby, an obnoxious Belgian lady, starts to gush when she recognises him, and then Van Damme makes the unforgivable mistake of saying he's a bit tired. And that's all it takes to set her off. Before he has the chance to say another word, he becomes the target of a rude tongue lashing, the awfulness of which can only be truly appreciated in the original language. He's trying to apologise, but it's no good: he's a stuck-up star too big for his boots, he's much better on screen and such a disappointment in real life. And Van Damme sits in the back of the taxi, physically unable to get out of her verbal line of fire. Poignant and yet highly comical. And it ends with him simply answering "yes ma'am" to everything she says (because irrespective of the character assassination that she just executed, she still wants a photo and he bloody well better give it to her). 

The film, I forgot to mention, is entirely in French, but I saw plenty of unilingual Brits watch it without even noticing that they had to read the subtitles. But there is no doubt that acting in his own language has liberated Van Damme from the bonds that prevented him from performing to the fullest of his ability. JCVD is a revelation. He doesn’t even sound anything like the English version of himself. Now the interesting experiment will be to see whether that rich vein of talent can be captured and transferred to an English idiom anew.

            Oh – and yes, he can still do the splits and darned good kicks, as attested by a very funny scene where one of the gormless post office "heisters" pleads with Jean-Claude to show him one of his legendary kicks...

In conclusion:
Under the cheese and dodgy B-movie editing, there's something raw and strikingly genuine about the Muscles from Brussels.

Jean-Claude Van Damme, despite his faults and turkeys, is and always has been a diamond in the rough to me, if for no other reason than keeping a down-in-the-dumps teenager company with his J Lo arse and funny Froggy accent...

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^[1] Sweating is my performance-quality meter. If a song or movie has an element which causes my synapses to start firing, I sweat. It’s a good sign.

^[2] With one exception: I cannot tolerate horrors. I know there are many avid fans of the genre out there, and whilst I can appreciate a well-made horror, I pay money to be enlightened, educated and entertained; not scared out of my wits, reminded of my own mortality and informed about the depths of human depravity and wickedness before being sent home packing with a shedload of nightmares. Or maybe I’m just a bit of wimp...

[3] Though there were others. These are the ones that I re-watched too many times to mention.

[4] I can hear all the Belgians shrieking in outrage as they read this, which amuses me to no end.

[5] Obviously – I mean, how stupid can you get? Yet I would get so caught up in the illusion of it all that someone had to point it out to me. I wish they hadn’t. Kicking someone three times in the face whilst being suspended in mid-air was just the coolest thing on earth.

[6] A must see: Van Damme in pink shorts!

^[7] I’m only talking about his face. His body looks damned good for a 50 year old. I saw a contemporaneous interview where he said he had let himself go and would never take off his shirt in public again, but I don't care what's under that shirt, I guarantee he's being too hard on himself – if any of us could look that good at his age, we’d be tearing down the street butt naked hollering for joy.

^[8] Probably unbeknown to the majority of English audiences, Belgium is regarded by France, the dominant cultural force, somewhat analogously to the way that Ireland is regarded by England. Besides the French thinking that Belgians have an IQ of 75, Belgium is also seen as a bit of a backwater.

^[9] Meaning he addresses the audience directly. Usually a big, fat cinematic no-no unless you know what you're doing.

[10] JCVD even managed to achieve a "Certified Fresh" Tomatometer rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with almost unanimous acknowledgement that Van Damme's performance is as raw as it is outstanding.