“Van Damme is back” says some of the blurb you come across on the internet. But it’s wrong: Van Damme is not “back”, because “back” would imply that after years of less than mediocre C-level action flicks he would have made the new Bloodsport or Kickboxer: a real good action movie that would put him back on the action movie chart and that is not the case. No, Van Damme did something he never did before: he made a real movie. A movie where he does not try to act but really does act. Well, he’s not acting as such; he’s being himself more or less. Van Damme re-invented himself by taking on what is undoubtedly his toughest movie role ever. A movie only few actors – even the really good ones – would have had the guts to make. And he succeeded.

Many would say that Van Damme had nothing to lose when he signed up to do a kind of parody / biopic movie on himself, playing Jean-Claude Van Damme. What would the derelict Belgian actor gone C-level action hero have to lose as everyone has been a witness to his once shiny career dwindling into direct-to-DVD oblivion? And what about the tabloid frenzy every time he would piss against the wind? Van Damme has been often ridiculed in the media – for a big part due to his metaphysical and often hilarious ramblings – and for his off-screen shenanigans. But contrary to the in-and-out-of-rehab starlets whose sole purpose seems to make it in the tabloids by drawing any kind of attention, Van Damme has actually quite a lot to show for himself. Here you have a man who has been successful in everything he ventured into: be it karate, bodybuilding, business or movie making and was singlehandedly responsible for building up all the success he sometimes helped tear down himself. Despite all of this, Jean-Claude Van Damme – née Jean-Claude Van Varenbergh – had the balls to put what was left of his career and image into the hands of young director Mabrouk El Mechri and make what easily is his best film ever!

Director El Mechri was quite adamant in pushing his vision on writing and directing the popular action star once he was asked to review the original screenplay. Despite being a longtime fan of Van Damme, he did not pull his punches in this strange mélange of fiction and real life drama that sometimes seems like a documentary of the troubled action hero. We see Van Damme battling over the custody of his daughter (initially to be played by his real-life son, which had to be changed due to legal reasons), struggling with tax problems and the overall fatigue of having to play in third-rate action movies. He retreats to the place of his roots, Brussels, to recuperate and spend some time with his family and the fans there that still love him. As he goes into the post office for a wire transfer he suddenly finds himself in a robbery in progress and becomes caught in a strange hostage situation.

El Mechri is quite frank on the influences he obviously used for this movie, notably Spike Jonze & Andy Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich and Sidney Lumet’s masterpiece Dog Day Afternoon. Van Damme plays himself with some exaggeration but there is also a lot of real and personal stuff woven into it. For the people that have followed van Damme’s career a bit, they will recognize the stories about drug abuse, the descent on the movie ladder by having to shoot crap movies and the public ridicule Van Damme was often subject to. All these painful references are uncompromisingly put in the story, which makes you appreciate even more the guts Van Damme had in bringing these personal elements to the screen. Then there is another surprise: Van Damme can act! We have seen him robotically recite his drama dialogue with fishy eyes in practically all his action flicks, but here he delivers his dialogue and drama parts really well. Surprisingly well. So good even, that you forget you are looking at a fiction movie and you find yourself looking at Van Damme, the Actor. To make it even more shocking, Van Damme managed to genuinely move me with his impressive monologue in the post office. Never have we seen the Belgian actor like this and you immediately start to wonder why.

The latter could partially be explained by the fact that van Damme takes on his first French-spoken movie role ever and seeing him act in his native language and in his native town makes him more believable than ever. Also, El Mechri wanted to capture the star as purely as possible and a lot of improvisation was put into the screenplay. The fact that he plays himself does not make things easier, as the shooting of one particular scene made clear. In this scene he is confronted with the public ridicule he has often be a victim of by showing excerpts on TV. When turning this scene for the first time, Van Damme sat unmovingly and displayed little reaction. The director took him aside and asked what the problem was. He responded that he didn’t know how to act in this scene, as he had been subjected to these kinds of images for most of his career which numbed him down to the point where he wouldn’t react to it anymore. It clearly shows to what lengths the script was taking the real-life references.

You could – rightfully so – criticise some elements of the screenplay, but the overall idea and energy of the movie is rock solid and legit. The movie has an authentic vibe to it and is sometime reminiscent of that other French realistic drama benchmark, La Haine. Not coincidentally, two of the main characters of JCVD have played in La Haine and El Mechri is clearly inspired by Matthieu Kassovitz’ style. Jean-Claude van Damme is therefore not back, but Jean-Claude van Varenbergh the actor seems to have taken his place. Let’s see if we can get more aware of this good stuff in the future.