JCVD is set in Brussels in Belgium where washed-up action star Jean-Claude Van Damme (executive producer Jean-Claude Van Damme) is fighting for custody of his young daughter Gloria, JCVD's lawyer wants to be paid & JCVD's credit cards don't work so he decides to stop off at a Post Office in the town of Shaerbeek to draw some money out of his account. However JCVD accidentally walks into the middle of a hold up as three armed men are robbing the Post Office, they take JCVD as a hostage & after a few shots are fired a policeman outside sees JCVD & assumes that he is the robber. In seconds the Belgium police are everywhere & the robbery has turned into a hostage situation, the robbers use JCVD to communicate with the police & his celebrity means the crime scene becomes a media circus & even the robbers themselves start to become starstruck...
This French, Luxembourg & Belgium co-production was directed Mabrouk El Mechri & is not what one would expect from a JCVD film, think of JCVD & I think of decent sometimes even good action fare but this is far from that & besides being genuinely surprised I really quite liked JCVD for what it was. JCVD is a strange & offbeat sort of film, the script pokes fun at JCVD himself with references to the cheap action films he makes, director's & producers who don't car about the finished film, the fact Hollywood has turned it's back on him, the media & fan attention he receives is playfully mocked & it even features his mom & dad. I suspect that JCVD is part autobiographical with JCVD fighting for custody of his daughter here when in real life he actually fought for custody of his son, the digs at Hollywood & for instance John Woo who abandoned him & there's this five minute monologue by JCVD who turns to the camera & talks to the audience about his drug problem, his insecurity with success & the trappings of fame amongst other things. JCVD is a fascinating character study, you get the feeling that the lines between fact & fiction are thinly drawn here & it's difficult to fathom what might have been based on a real event. The heist plot is also pretty good, JCVD gets stuck in the middle by accident & unlike his screen persona he's no hero here, he doesn't save the day & ends up going to jail at the end. I don't know, I just really liked this off the wall & odd little film that almost defies categorisation as it's not really an action film, it's not strictly an autobiography, it's not really a drama & while it has quite a bit of humour & never takes itself seriously JCVD isn't a comedy either & I guess it lies somewhere between them. At over 90 minutes it breezes by & the unusual narrative is also refreshing, the story unfolds from several perspectives & dips back in time every so often to get a different viewpoint or explain something or show what happened sometime earlier.
For some reason the whole film has a very desaturated look, it's a very brown film with very little colour, in fact I don't think there's any bright colours here at all & it does get a bit bland looking. There's no real action scenes here, the opening features a long continuous shot of JCVD avoiding explosions & beating bad guy's up but that's part of a film he is making. Another aspect of JCVD I didn't expect was that 99% of the film is in French so be warned you will have to read the subtitles which will be a deal killer for some but I didn't mind too much.
Filmed in Brussels in Belgium the film looks good, the sepia tone dulls the picture but it's well made enough I suppose. The acting is good here, JCVD is pretty good in this while the rest of the cast are unknowns (at least to me anyway).
JCVD was much better than I expected although having said that it wasn't anything like I expected, as a fun yet never mean look at JCVD himself wrapped up in a fairly good heist film I liked it. Not what many will expect but I think it will be better than many expect, I liked it.
This French, Luxembourg & Belgium co-production was directed Mabrouk El Mechri & is not what one would expect from a JCVD film, think of JCVD & I think of decent sometimes even good action fare but this is far from that & besides being genuinely surprised I really quite liked JCVD for what it was. JCVD is a strange & offbeat sort of film, the script pokes fun at JCVD himself with references to the cheap action films he makes, director's & producers who don't car about the finished film, the fact Hollywood has turned it's back on him, the media & fan attention he receives is playfully mocked & it even features his mom & dad. I suspect that JCVD is part autobiographical with JCVD fighting for custody of his daughter here when in real life he actually fought for custody of his son, the digs at Hollywood & for instance John Woo who abandoned him & there's this five minute monologue by JCVD who turns to the camera & talks to the audience about his drug problem, his insecurity with success & the trappings of fame amongst other things. JCVD is a fascinating character study, you get the feeling that the lines between fact & fiction are thinly drawn here & it's difficult to fathom what might have been based on a real event. The heist plot is also pretty good, JCVD gets stuck in the middle by accident & unlike his screen persona he's no hero here, he doesn't save the day & ends up going to jail at the end. I don't know, I just really liked this off the wall & odd little film that almost defies categorisation as it's not really an action film, it's not strictly an autobiography, it's not really a drama & while it has quite a bit of humour & never takes itself seriously JCVD isn't a comedy either & I guess it lies somewhere between them. At over 90 minutes it breezes by & the unusual narrative is also refreshing, the story unfolds from several perspectives & dips back in time every so often to get a different viewpoint or explain something or show what happened sometime earlier.
For some reason the whole film has a very desaturated look, it's a very brown film with very little colour, in fact I don't think there's any bright colours here at all & it does get a bit bland looking. There's no real action scenes here, the opening features a long continuous shot of JCVD avoiding explosions & beating bad guy's up but that's part of a film he is making. Another aspect of JCVD I didn't expect was that 99% of the film is in French so be warned you will have to read the subtitles which will be a deal killer for some but I didn't mind too much.
Filmed in Brussels in Belgium the film looks good, the sepia tone dulls the picture but it's well made enough I suppose. The acting is good here, JCVD is pretty good in this while the rest of the cast are unknowns (at least to me anyway).
JCVD was much better than I expected although having said that it wasn't anything like I expected, as a fun yet never mean look at JCVD himself wrapped up in a fairly good heist film I liked it. Not what many will expect but I think it will be better than many expect, I liked it.