People Tell Me I Look Like Han Solo.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
R.I.P. Patrick Swayze
A week or so ago I mentioned a few movies playing at the Toronto International Film Festival that caught my eye (sadly, none of which I’ve actually gotten the chance to see), one of which was Peter Stebbings’ oddball indie superhero movie Defendor, starring Woody Harrelson.It’s since been picked up by Sony for worldwide distribution (except for here in Canada, where it will be released by the fine folks at Alliance Films). I haven’t seen Defendor so I can’t say whether it’s good or not, but it certainly looks interesting, if nothing else. I can’t wait to check it out for myself. I’ll keep you posted.
Speaking of Sony and superheroes, do you know what you’re doing on May 6, 2011? Sony would like you to clear that date to see Spider-Man 4. Variety reports that director Sam Raimi, as well as stars Tobey Macguire and Kirsten Dunst, are set to go for a sequel. I actually like this idea for a couple of reasons: (1) it will hopefully free us from the notion of the trilogy as the accepted form that just about all sci-fi/fantasy/superhero stories must take, and (2) it gives Raimi a chance to redeem himself after the disappointing Spider-Man 3. I didn’t hate that movie as much as some did, but it was way too filled with stuff (there was easily two films worth of ideas shoehorned into one, presumably because everyone involved assumed it would be the last Spider-Man movie, at least with that cast and crew). With any luck, Raimi will be left alone to make the movie he wants to make, and no villains will be foisted upon him by Marvel or the studio or fans (which is apparently what happened with Venom in the last movie).
In related news (it’s actually in the same story), Marvel has announced that a few weeks later, on May 20, 2011, they’ll release Thor in theaters. Personally I’m more excited about Thor, as I like the character more and I think that if director Kenneth Branagh can pull off the balance between superhero action and the book’s more mythic, fantastic themes, it’ll be a take on the superhero we haven’t really seen yet. We’ll see how it all goes down, but I can’t until I start seeing more stuff about both films in the coming months.
So Patrick Swayze died this week, and as much as this is sort of “old news” by now in our contemporary cycle of celebrity journalism, I feel I have to weigh in, becau
se he was in some pretty excellent movies over the years, including one of my all-time favorites.
First off, I should get something out of the way: I never cared for Ghost and I don’t think I’ve ever seen all of Dirty Dancing. But one of the highest compliments I can pay any actor is when I don’t even think of them being in a particular movie because I so associate them with the character. A great example of this is Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski; I always have to do a mental double-take to remember that he’s in that, because when I think of that movie I always just think of The Dude. And Patrick Swayze does that to me in Point Break, which I think of as a Keanu Reeves movie in which the villain isn’t Patrick Swayze, but just Bodhi. He’s great in that movie, and takes a character that doesn’t really make much sense on paper – a surfing, sky-diving, bank-robbing adrenaline junkie who doubles as a quasi-Zen philosopher – and he just makes it work. Even after the film shifts gears and he begins to play Bodhi as a full-on villain (complete with kidnapping the hero’s girl), he gives the character a charisma and likeability that most other actors would have ditched in favor of more traditional scenery-chewing bad-guy stuff.
But Swayze’s death is also a rare instance where everyone knew it was going to happen, it was just a matter of time. And I think he deserves extra kudos for his work on The Beast, the A&E cop drama he made after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He was determined to go out working, and that’s admirable.
Also, he was in Road House, for the love of god, one of the campiest camp classics in the history of camp classics. Patrick Swayze was the first man I saw rip out another man’s throat in a movie. And I’ll never forget it.
se he was in some pretty excellent movies over the years, including one of my all-time favorites.First off, I should get something out of the way: I never cared for Ghost and I don’t think I’ve ever seen all of Dirty Dancing. But one of the highest compliments I can pay any actor is when I don’t even think of them being in a particular movie because I so associate them with the character. A great example of this is Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski; I always have to do a mental double-take to remember that he’s in that, because when I think of that movie I always just think of The Dude. And Patrick Swayze does that to me in Point Break, which I think of as a Keanu Reeves movie in which the villain isn’t Patrick Swayze, but just Bodhi. He’s great in that movie, and takes a character that doesn’t really make much sense on paper – a surfing, sky-diving, bank-robbing adrenaline junkie who doubles as a quasi-Zen philosopher – and he just makes it work. Even after the film shifts gears and he begins to play Bodhi as a full-on villain (complete with kidnapping the hero’s girl), he gives the character a charisma and likeability that most other actors would have ditched in favor of more traditional scenery-chewing bad-guy stuff.
But Swayze’s death is also a rare instance where everyone knew it was going to happen, it was just a matter of time. And I think he deserves extra kudos for his work on The Beast, the A&E cop drama he made after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He was determined to go out working, and that’s admirable.
Also, he was in Road House, for the love of god, one of the campiest camp classics in the history of camp classics. Patrick Swayze was the first man I saw rip out another man’s throat in a movie. And I’ll never forget it.
***
A week or so ago I mentioned a few movies playing at the Toronto International Film Festival that caught my eye (sadly, none of which I’ve actually gotten the chance to see), one of which was Peter Stebbings’ oddball indie superhero movie Defendor, starring Woody Harrelson.
***
Speaking of Sony and superheroes, do you know what you’re doing on May 6, 2011? Sony would like you to clear that date to see Spider-Man 4. Variety reports that director Sam Raimi, as well as stars Tobey Macguire and Kirsten Dunst, are set to go for a sequel. I actually like this idea for a couple of reasons: (1) it will hopefully free us from the notion of the trilogy as the accepted form that just about all sci-fi/fantasy/superhero stories must take, and (2) it gives Raimi a chance to redeem himself after the disappointing Spider-Man 3. I didn’t hate that movie as much as some did, but it was way too filled with stuff (there was easily two films worth of ideas shoehorned into one, presumably because everyone involved assumed it would be the last Spider-Man movie, at least with that cast and crew). With any luck, Raimi will be left alone to make the movie he wants to make, and no villains will be foisted upon him by Marvel or the studio or fans (which is apparently what happened with Venom in the last movie).
In related news (it’s actually in the same story), Marvel has announced that a few weeks later, on May 20, 2011, they’ll release Thor in theaters. Personally I’m more excited about Thor, as I like the character more and I think that if director Kenneth Branagh can pull off the balance between superhero action and the book’s more mythic, fantastic themes, it’ll be a take on the superhero we haven’t really seen yet. We’ll see how it all goes down, but I can’t until I start seeing more stuff about both films in the coming months.
Labels: Movie news, superheroes, Toronto Film Festival
¶ 10:03 AM 0 Comments
Friday, September 4, 2009
Trio of TIFF trailers
The Toronto International Film Festival begins next week, and in honor of my hometown film festival I thought I'd look at a couple of trailers for three films screening at TIFF this year that I'm personally very excited about.
I'll start with what's probably the biggest, most "mainstream" movie of the three (though that's a relative term), The Men Who Stare At Goats, starring George Clooney and Ewan McGregor. The film was directed by actor/writer/director/Clooney pal Grant Heslov (he co-wrote and produced Clooney's truly excellent 2005 directorial effort about legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow, Good Night, And Good Luck.), and after watching this trailer this movie immediately took a position near the top of the list of movies I really want to see this year. It's a "based on a true story" tale about a reporter (McGregor) following a former "psychic spy" (Clooney) developed by the American government as part of a top-secret project. I have no idea how true any of the stuff in the movie is (though I suspect only the truly out-there stuff is real; life's funny that way), but this is one of the best trailers I've seen in a while. It's funny as hell, does a great job of selling the movie's bizarre premise, and it got Boston's 'More Than A Feeling' (one of my favorite songs of that era) wedged in my head for days. I gotta see this thing.
Check out the trailer for The Men Who Stare At Goats via Apple.
I'll start with what's probably the biggest, most "mainstream" movie of the three (though that's a relative term), The Men Who Stare At Goats, starring George Clooney and Ewan McGregor. The film was directed by actor/writer/director/Clooney pal Grant Heslov (he co-wrote and produced Clooney's truly excellent 2005 directorial effort about legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow, Good Night, And Good Luck.), and after watching this trailer this movie immediately took a position near the top of the list of movies I really want to see this year. It's a "based on a true story" tale about a reporter (McGregor) following a former "psychic spy" (Clooney) developed by the American government as part of a top-secret project. I have no idea how true any of the stuff in the movie is (though I suspect only the truly out-there stuff is real; life's funny that way), but this is one of the best trailers I've seen in a while. It's funny as hell, does a great job of selling the movie's bizarre premise, and it got Boston's 'More Than A Feeling' (one of my favorite songs of that era) wedged in my head for days. I gotta see this thing.
Check out the trailer for The Men Who Stare At Goats via Apple.
***
Next up is Defendor, a...unique-looking take on superheroes. I actually promised myself after all the comic book-themed posts I've been writing lately that I'd take a break from talking about anything cape-related, but this one just looks too promising for me not to mention. And it's not even really the geek in me that's interested in this one; the appeal is that it seems more like an indie film about a guy (Woody Harrelson) who thinks he's a superhero, and all the problems that sprout from that. (He's ostensibly in pursuit of a villain called Captain Industry, but I suspect he'll be revealed to be a figment of Defendor's imagination). A movie like this is definitely an ambitious debut for first-time Canadian writer/director Peter Stebbings, but the trailer definitely hooked me, and I'll do my best to see this one as soon as I can.
***
And finally, on a purely personal note, this year's TIFF will host the latest film from one of my favorite Hong Kong directors, Johnnie To. Vengeance is a bit of a change of pace for To, as it stars a French rock star, Johnny Hallyday, and seems to be mostly in English. Hallyday plays an aging chef whose daughter is seriously injured in a mob hit that also kills her Chinese husband and their children in Hong Kong, but the gangsters who whacked his family soon learn this "chef" is actually a retired hitman himself. I love revenge movies, and I love Johnnie To movies, so naturally I'm pretty stoked about Vengeance. I don't know a ton about this movie beyond the plot, but the trailer promises some beautifully-shot action and cool setpieces (To's 2006 movie Exiled has the best gunfights I've seen since John Woo went to Hollywood), so I'm sold.
Labels: Johnnie To, Toronto Film Festival, trailers
¶ 7:03 AM 0 Comments
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
My TIFF Not-So-Diary
The Toronto International Film Festival is now in full swing, which means, for me, the annual ritual of kicking myself for not going to see enough (usually this means “any”) movies when one of the world’s biggest film festivals is happening in my hometown. This year I did manage to see JCVD (read my gushing review here), which was my first official TIFF screening – I went to some parties in years past, and saw an unofficial cast-and-crew screening of an excellent movie made by a good buddy of mine called Young People F**king that showed at last year’s TIFF just before the festival opened. But usually I spend a week and a half feeling like a movie-geek poseur because I never seem to be able to make time for any TIFF movies (attending a non-gala screening isn’t really that big of a hassle, but it is more involved than going to see a movie at a regular theatre, and I am notoriously lazy).
While waiting in line to see JCVD, I overheard a couple talking about a friend of theirs who waited in line for six hours to see something. I wish there was anything in the world I wanted so badly I’d be willing to wait in line for six hours for it, but I can’t think of anything that fits that bill right now. And as the smaller, often foreign cult movies that at one time you could ONLY see at a film festival get released on DVD worldwide, I find I can usually see almost anything playing at TIFF (or Cannes or Venice for that matter) within a year, tops, either theatrically or on DVD (my region-free DVD player also helps). I have a whole shelf of DVDs of crazy Japanese movies that, 10 years ago, I would have had to troll “underground” video stores to rent bootleg VHS copies of, but now they’re readily available at most big retailers.
But all that said, every year there’s a handful of movies I almost consider quitting my job to go to see, and given that this year I have a blog, I will tell you about them.
The Wrestler
I’m on record as saying I think Darren Aronofsky is one of the most fiercely talented directors out there right now, and I’ve been reading about this drama about a washed-up pro wrestler for months. I used to be a pretty serious wrestling fan back in the day, and I’m fascinated by the real lives these guys live and the toll it takes (an oftentimes genuinely messed-up existence unfortunately highlighted by the Chris Benoit incident), and I also love Mickey Rourke. It’s always nice when it appears that a film I’ve been interested in for a while turns out to be great, and the buzz around The Wrestler is really starting to build, even Oscar talk for Rourke. The film was just picked up by Fox Searchlight, so hopefully we’ll get a trailer and a release date soon – presumably by the end of the year if they want to capitalize on the Oscar speculation.
Che
Steven Soderbergh is probably my favourite director, period (I sometimes get goosebumps just thinking about how brilliant The Limey is), and his four-hour, biopic of revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara (screened in two parts, à la Kill Bill) obviously sounds pretty ambitious, but it stars Benicio Del Toro, whose last collaboration with Soderbergh, Traffic, landed them both Oscars, so my hopes are high (I’m also quite tolerant of my favourite filmmakers’ more self-indulgent stuff – I’m a big fan of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia) with this one. Che is also the TIFF movie I’m most likely to kick myself for not seeing, as last I heard it still hadn’t been picked up by a distributor, and as a four-hour biopic about a Cuban revolutionary, it’s sort of a tough sell to wider audiences, so it’s still up in the air as to what form this movie will take when it’s eventually released widely. Hopefully one way or another Soderbergh’s full-length version will see the light of day on DVD at least. I know I’ll buy it the day it’s released.
UPDATE: Variety is reporting that IFC Films has picked up Che and will release it in its four-hour form (with an intermission) in New York and L.A. for a week before the end of the year to qualify for the Oscars, and then release the film early next year in two parts, The Argentine (Part 1) and The Guerilla (Part 2). Huzzah!
Ashes of Time Redux
Years before Ang Lee blew the doors off the wuxia genre with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Wong Kar Wai, king of the Hong Kong arthouse scene, took a stab at it with 1994’s Ashes of Time, his only martial arts film. Wong’s fusion of lyrical, cerebral filmmaking and traditional swordplay movies was pretty much ignored critically and commercially, despite its cast of Hong Kong cinema all-stars. I managed to track down a blurry VHS copy in my student days, and I was impressed with it then (it’s virtually impossible to find on DVD except in similarly cruddy quality, and there are apparently several different versions floating around out there), so I was particularly excited when I learned Wong was remastering the film and re-scoring it (with the help of Yo-Yo Ma, no less). I’m not sure when and how this film will eventually be released here in North America, but whenever and however it happens, I’ll be there with bells on. If the new version is half as good as I remember the original being, it’ll be great.
There’s a bunch of bigger movies playing at this year’s festival I’m dying to see that are due for regular theatrical releases in before the year’s out, like the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading, the Ed Harris-directed Western Appaloosa and Borat director Larry Charles’ documentary on religion with Bill Maher, Religulous, all of which I have high expectations for.
I couldn’t get to all the movies I wanted to see this year, but I did manage to see one of the films I really wanted to see. Which is one more than I’ve seen at TIFF before, really, so that one’s going into the “win” column.
While waiting in line to see JCVD, I overheard a couple talking about a friend of theirs who waited in line for six hours to see something. I wish there was anything in the world I wanted so badly I’d be willing to wait in line for six hours for it, but I can’t think of anything that fits that bill right now. And as the smaller, often foreign cult movies that at one time you could ONLY see at a film festival get released on DVD worldwide, I find I can usually see almost anything playing at TIFF (or Cannes or Venice for that matter) within a year, tops, either theatrically or on DVD (my region-free DVD player also helps). I have a whole shelf of DVDs of crazy Japanese movies that, 10 years ago, I would have had to troll “underground” video stores to rent bootleg VHS copies of, but now they’re readily available at most big retailers.
But all that said, every year there’s a handful of movies I almost consider quitting my job to go to see, and given that this year I have a blog, I will tell you about them.
The Wrestler
I’m on record as saying I think Darren Aronofsky is one of the most fiercely talented directors out there right now, and I’ve been reading about this drama about a washed-up pro wrestler for months. I used to be a pretty serious wrestling fan back in the day, and I’m fascinated by the real lives these guys live and the toll it takes (an oftentimes genuinely messed-up existence unfortunately highlighted by the Chris Benoit incident), and I also love Mickey Rourke. It’s always nice when it appears that a film I’ve been interested in for a while turns out to be great, and the buzz around The Wrestler is really starting to build, even Oscar talk for Rourke. The film was just picked up by Fox Searchlight, so hopefully we’ll get a trailer and a release date soon – presumably by the end of the year if they want to capitalize on the Oscar speculation.
Che
Steven Soderbergh is probably my favourite director, period (I sometimes get goosebumps just thinking about how brilliant The Limey is), and his four-hour, biopic of revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara (screened in two parts, à la Kill Bill) obviously sounds pretty ambitious, but it stars Benicio Del Toro, whose last collaboration with Soderbergh, Traffic, landed them both Oscars, so my hopes are high (I’m also quite tolerant of my favourite filmmakers’ more self-indulgent stuff – I’m a big fan of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia) with this one. Che is also the TIFF movie I’m most likely to kick myself for not seeing, as last I heard it still hadn’t been picked up by a distributor, and as a four-hour biopic about a Cuban revolutionary, it’s sort of a tough sell to wider audiences, so it’s still up in the air as to what form this movie will take when it’s eventually released widely. Hopefully one way or another Soderbergh’s full-length version will see the light of day on DVD at least. I know I’ll buy it the day it’s released.
UPDATE: Variety is reporting that IFC Films has picked up Che and will release it in its four-hour form (with an intermission) in New York and L.A. for a week before the end of the year to qualify for the Oscars, and then release the film early next year in two parts, The Argentine (Part 1) and The Guerilla (Part 2). Huzzah!
Ashes of Time Redux
Years before Ang Lee blew the doors off the wuxia genre with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Wong Kar Wai, king of the Hong Kong arthouse scene, took a stab at it with 1994’s Ashes of Time, his only martial arts film. Wong’s fusion of lyrical, cerebral filmmaking and traditional swordplay movies was pretty much ignored critically and commercially, despite its cast of Hong Kong cinema all-stars. I managed to track down a blurry VHS copy in my student days, and I was impressed with it then (it’s virtually impossible to find on DVD except in similarly cruddy quality, and there are apparently several different versions floating around out there), so I was particularly excited when I learned Wong was remastering the film and re-scoring it (with the help of Yo-Yo Ma, no less). I’m not sure when and how this film will eventually be released here in North America, but whenever and however it happens, I’ll be there with bells on. If the new version is half as good as I remember the original being, it’ll be great.
There’s a bunch of bigger movies playing at this year’s festival I’m dying to see that are due for regular theatrical releases in before the year’s out, like the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading, the Ed Harris-directed Western Appaloosa and Borat director Larry Charles’ documentary on religion with Bill Maher, Religulous, all of which I have high expectations for.
I couldn’t get to all the movies I wanted to see this year, but I did manage to see one of the films I really wanted to see. Which is one more than I’ve seen at TIFF before, really, so that one’s going into the “win” column.
Labels: Random thoughts, Toronto Film Festival
¶ 2:09 PM 1 Comments
Friday, September 5, 2008
TIFF Review: JCVD
I mananged to catch Jean-Claude Van Damme's new film, JCVD, at a Midnight Madness screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, and I'm still trying to process the fact that not only does Jean-Claude Van Damme have movie on the festival circuit (it also played at Cannes a few months ago), he has a great movie on the festival circuit.
In the early ‘90s, Jean-Claude Van Damme was one of the hottest action stars on the planet, combining good looks and impressive karate skills into a nicely marketable package, and his willingness to show off his physique helped him win over a lot of female fans. He made a string of hit action movies before fading into direct-to-video obscurity as “real” actors like Nic
olas Cage became the new action superstars. JCVD is Van Damme’s attempt at reinventing himself after a decade in the straight-to-video wilderness, a satirical, brutally honest examination of himself and his career. And not only is it successful, I think it may be one of the best movies I’ve seen this year.
I should mention that I was a pretty big fan of Jean-Claude Van Damme back in his early-‘90s heyday. I was in my early teens and just hitting my stride as a movie geek, devouring as many films as I could. Granted, most of these were schlocky action and horror and sci-fi flicks, but those summers I spent basically just watching movies with my best friend were very much my formative years as a movie lover. Action was my preferred genre, and Van Damme was one of my favourite action stars. Sure, his accent made pretty much all his dialogue awkward (and often unintentionally funny), and I’m certainly not going to sit here and argue that movies like Kickboxer and Double Impact are quality films by any stretch of the imagination (though Hard Target, John Woo’s first American movie, is a wonderfully over-the-top action flick, and I still think it’s Woo’s best Hollywood effort), but Van Damme had an easy charm about him that contemporaries like Steven Segal lacked, and I never got the feeling he took himself all that seriously. As ridiculous and violent (and ridiculously violent) as his movies were, they were also just fun.
JCVD builds on that sense that Van Damme doesn’t take himself too seriously and launches it into an insane stratosphere of meta-humour and viciously funny self-satire the likes of which I’ve never seen. Sure, celebrities have parodied themselves plenty of times before, but never like this. It’s one thing for George Clooney to have some fun with his ladies-man image, but it’s another entirely for Van Damme to mine his child-custody battles and history of drug problems and failed relationships for comedic and dramatic fodder.
JCVD stars Van Damme as a somewhat fictionalized version of himself, a fading action star on the cusp of losing custody of his daughter in a legal battle that his work in low-rent action flicks can’t quite pay for. He returns to his home country of Belgium (where he’s still considered a huge star bordering on national treasure) only to find out that if he doesn’t get his L.A. attorneys a big chunk of cash, they’ll drop his case. He stops by a post office-slash-bank to try to wire some money (which he doesn’t have) to his lawyers, and ends up walking into a robbery in progress, complete with bickering thieves and terrified hostages. The robbers try to turn Van Damme’s presence to their advantage, using him as a spokesman for their demands to the police, and before long the word’s gotten out that the Muscles from Brussels is holding up a bank, and a full-on media circus ensues.
I have a huge weakness for meta-humour as well as for celebrities poking fun at themselves, and JCVD has plenty of both. Except here Van Damme isn’t just poking fun at himself, he’s taking long, deep gouges. But as funny as the movie is – and it’s absolutely hilarious in parts, and unlike a lot of his previous films, it’s funny on purpose – there’s a real sadness at the heart of the JCVD character. He’s entirely motivated by his fear of losing his daughter, and at 47, his weathered face and perpetually-exhausted expression convey a surprising amount of emotion. Which brings me to the real revelation of JCVD, which is that Jean-Claude Van Damme can actually act. At first I thought maybe his shockingly good performance was due in part to the fact that for the first time he’s acting in his native language, but he’s just as good in the L.A.-set scenes, which are in English. But the real highlight is a truly remarkable five-minute monologue that Van Damme delivers to the camera that basically encapsulates JCVD’s themes of celebrity and fame and the price people pay to achieve their dreams, and what they do once they’ve achieved them.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention how well-made JCVD is. French director Mabrouk El Mechri is incredibly talented, and Van Damme’s never been in a movie that looked this good. El Mechri fills JCVD with cleverly composed shots, and the opening sequence, an elaborate, single-take action sequence that runs several minutes long, is incredible. If he builds on the potential he displays in JCVD, he could turn into one of France’s more interesting filmmakers.
I have an unfortunate tendency to build up movies I’m anticipating up in my head, and often they don’t live up to my brain-hype. As a lapsed Van Damme fan – I haven’t seen anything he’s done since 1998’s abysmal Knock Off – I’d been reading about JCVD for over a year now, and I had fairly high expectations going in. Not only was I not disappointed, I was floored.
GRADE: A
olas Cage became the new action superstars. JCVD is Van Damme’s attempt at reinventing himself after a decade in the straight-to-video wilderness, a satirical, brutally honest examination of himself and his career. And not only is it successful, I think it may be one of the best movies I’ve seen this year.I should mention that I was a pretty big fan of Jean-Claude Van Damme back in his early-‘90s heyday. I was in my early teens and just hitting my stride as a movie geek, devouring as many films as I could. Granted, most of these were schlocky action and horror and sci-fi flicks, but those summers I spent basically just watching movies with my best friend were very much my formative years as a movie lover. Action was my preferred genre, and Van Damme was one of my favourite action stars. Sure, his accent made pretty much all his dialogue awkward (and often unintentionally funny), and I’m certainly not going to sit here and argue that movies like Kickboxer and Double Impact are quality films by any stretch of the imagination (though Hard Target, John Woo’s first American movie, is a wonderfully over-the-top action flick, and I still think it’s Woo’s best Hollywood effort), but Van Damme had an easy charm about him that contemporaries like Steven Segal lacked, and I never got the feeling he took himself all that seriously. As ridiculous and violent (and ridiculously violent) as his movies were, they were also just fun.
JCVD builds on that sense that Van Damme doesn’t take himself too seriously and launches it into an insane stratosphere of meta-humour and viciously funny self-satire the likes of which I’ve never seen. Sure, celebrities have parodied themselves plenty of times before, but never like this. It’s one thing for George Clooney to have some fun with his ladies-man image, but it’s another entirely for Van Damme to mine his child-custody battles and history of drug problems and failed relationships for comedic and dramatic fodder.
JCVD stars Van Damme as a somewhat fictionalized version of himself, a fading action star on the cusp of losing custody of his daughter in a legal battle that his work in low-rent action flicks can’t quite pay for. He returns to his home country of Belgium (where he’s still considered a huge star bordering on national treasure) only to find out that if he doesn’t get his L.A. attorneys a big chunk of cash, they’ll drop his case. He stops by a post office-slash-bank to try to wire some money (which he doesn’t have) to his lawyers, and ends up walking into a robbery in progress, complete with bickering thieves and terrified hostages. The robbers try to turn Van Damme’s presence to their advantage, using him as a spokesman for their demands to the police, and before long the word’s gotten out that the Muscles from Brussels is holding up a bank, and a full-on media circus ensues.
I have a huge weakness for meta-humour as well as for celebrities poking fun at themselves, and JCVD has plenty of both. Except here Van Damme isn’t just poking fun at himself, he’s taking long, deep gouges. But as funny as the movie is – and it’s absolutely hilarious in parts, and unlike a lot of his previous films, it’s funny on purpose – there’s a real sadness at the heart of the JCVD character. He’s entirely motivated by his fear of losing his daughter, and at 47, his weathered face and perpetually-exhausted expression convey a surprising amount of emotion. Which brings me to the real revelation of JCVD, which is that Jean-Claude Van Damme can actually act. At first I thought maybe his shockingly good performance was due in part to the fact that for the first time he’s acting in his native language, but he’s just as good in the L.A.-set scenes, which are in English. But the real highlight is a truly remarkable five-minute monologue that Van Damme delivers to the camera that basically encapsulates JCVD’s themes of celebrity and fame and the price people pay to achieve their dreams, and what they do once they’ve achieved them.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention how well-made JCVD is. French director Mabrouk El Mechri is incredibly talented, and Van Damme’s never been in a movie that looked this good. El Mechri fills JCVD with cleverly composed shots, and the opening sequence, an elaborate, single-take action sequence that runs several minutes long, is incredible. If he builds on the potential he displays in JCVD, he could turn into one of France’s more interesting filmmakers.
I have an unfortunate tendency to build up movies I’m anticipating up in my head, and often they don’t live up to my brain-hype. As a lapsed Van Damme fan – I haven’t seen anything he’s done since 1998’s abysmal Knock Off – I’d been reading about JCVD for over a year now, and I had fairly high expectations going in. Not only was I not disappointed, I was floored.
GRADE: A
Labels: JCVD, Movie review, Toronto Film Festival
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