JCVD

I wouldn't agree with the blurb on the box, which suggests Jean Claude Van Damme deserves an Oscar for this movie, but JCVD did cause me to reevaluate a few things. van Damme plays himself, 47 years old, still appearing in terrible movies. But he knows they're terrible, and he wants to do better films, but this is what he's offered and well, he's losing a court battle for custody of his daughter and he needs cash for legal bills. He's returns to Belgium, to get away from it all, recharge a little. He stops at a bank (which is also a post office, which is perhaps common in Belgium) to make a cash transfer, it's being robbed, he's now a hostage, but everyone thinks he might be the one robbing the place. Things go downhill from there.

Maybe the key for van Damme is to do movies that aren't in English (I watched the theatrical version, with English subtitles). It isn't his first language, right? Maybe that makes it harder to emote, when what he's saying doesn't come naturally. Parts of this film are in English, the parts in the U.S., but most of it is subtitled because he's in Belgium. Maybe it's easier for him to give a good performance because he's playing himself, letting all his frustrations with his life out.

I make jokes about how I hope Richard Harris was in The Deadly Trackers because he had a coke habit that needed financing, because it's terrible. But that assumes he doesn't realize that, that he isn't doing the best he can with the material presented. He might be phoning it in, or he might honestly have believed it was a great film, but I shouldn't necessarily assume that. I think we tend to assume actors live off in their own little worlds, where they see things completely differently from the rest of us. A lot of things add to that perception. The glowing interviews they give when hyping a film, where they all talk about how excited they were about making it, and then it turns out to be garbage. Well hell, they knew that, but do we really expect them to say that ahead of time? Apparently. Sometimes other things force our hands. I imagine most of us have taken jobs we didn't really want at one point because we needed the money. You put on a happy face for the people that matter, and concentrate on getting through it in the hopes there'll be something better.

That's van Damme in this film. He wants to shoot in a studio, not some factory in Bulgaria. He wants a real director, a cinematographer, a decent script, not something that's a piece of junk because they're committing two-thirds of the budget to his salary. But he can't seem to get that; maybe he's traveled too far down the other road to get back. That bit, where he argues with his agent about it is an excellent scene, the way his agent is offscreen throughout, and van Damme is sitting on a couch, slumped against the wall. He looks beaten, exhausted, but he's determined to do better films. Then he has to swallow his pride and call his agent back.

There are a lot of good scenes in this film. The one with his daughter during the custody hearing. How, while he's inside the bank, the other hostages are always looking at him, their eyes saying, "Well, Mr Hot Shot Action Star? Do something! Save us!" van Damme's usually slouched a little, so it's like the weight of their stares is crushing him. The conversation with his cab driver. The hell of being a movie star is you can't ever have a bad day, or even be tired. All it takes is one short response or cross word, and suddenly you're getting berated for being a jerk, for being too big for your fans, and just who do you think you are, anyway? All you wanted was to catch a cat nap, and now you're an asshole.

What keeps it from feeling like an actor lashing out at fans is that van Damme is pretty open about his failings. He made bad films, perhaps with good intentions, but they weren't good. He messed with drugs, he got away from the things that were important to him. Those are his mistakes, and he sees them, but there's a question of what he can do about them at this point. Can't go back and erase them, he can only go forward and try to do better.

I'm curious to see him in other films now. Real ones, not the Bulgarian factory ones he's sick of. Not necessarily as a leading man, but he showed me something that suggests he could be a good supporting actor, in the right roles.