You think Van Damme, you think big explosions, action, round kicks, punches to the nuts and so on. Those would not be movies with character development about the essence of people and how decisions influence their lives and how they feel about it. Well, JCVD is like that. It portrays Van Damme as pretty much himself, trying to put his life back together and having a really bad day. It's a low budget film, it has no fight action one can speak of, but I think it was more cathartic and painful for Jean-Claude to play this film than any of the ones he got punched and kicked around in.
Everybody talks about the scene where he breaks the fourth wall and he explains how his life went on and how many regrets he has. It's a powerful scene that elevates the movie a lot. However, there are the smaller scenes with his interactions with people that hit me. Here is a guy who cannot go anywhere without people demanding things from him. He is trying to live his life and he just can't. The scene where the taxi driver admonishes him for not being in the mood to discuss with a fan and give her an autograph was both very real and so disgusting.
Anyway, there are a lot of good things about this film, one of them being Jean-Claude's acting in this Belgian film. There are quite a few bad things, too. The lighting choice was pretty terrible. I am sure there's a message in there, but it made for a hard to watch movie as I was not facing the TV directly. Making the film in French kind of make sense in the context, but it puts part of the audience off. I also don't think the interaction between the main character and the bank robbers was very realistic. They could have worked on that a little bit more.
I think as a fan of autobiographies or at least heartfelt confessionals, this was a good film and probably JCVD's best acting. I can't recommend it for anything else, though.
Everybody talks about the scene where he breaks the fourth wall and he explains how his life went on and how many regrets he has. It's a powerful scene that elevates the movie a lot. However, there are the smaller scenes with his interactions with people that hit me. Here is a guy who cannot go anywhere without people demanding things from him. He is trying to live his life and he just can't. The scene where the taxi driver admonishes him for not being in the mood to discuss with a fan and give her an autograph was both very real and so disgusting.
Anyway, there are a lot of good things about this film, one of them being Jean-Claude's acting in this Belgian film. There are quite a few bad things, too. The lighting choice was pretty terrible. I am sure there's a message in there, but it made for a hard to watch movie as I was not facing the TV directly. Making the film in French kind of make sense in the context, but it puts part of the audience off. I also don't think the interaction between the main character and the bank robbers was very realistic. They could have worked on that a little bit more.
I think as a fan of autobiographies or at least heartfelt confessionals, this was a good film and probably JCVD's best acting. I can't recommend it for anything else, though.
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