There’s nothing worse than starting out a film review with a massive cliche like “Van Damme like we’ve never seen him before,” but that’s exactly what happens in JCVD, his startlingly autobiographical new film in which he plays himself. With well-known movie stars (or characters), one of the most interesting things that they can do is level with us so we can relate to them on a realistic level, when they approach the reality of who or what they are and we see them looking at themselves through our eyes. If this weren’t true, celebrity interviews would never be interesting.

In JCVD, Van Damme plays himself in his hometown. He is routinely stopped by excited fans who asks for pictures and autographs, but we also learn of a bitter legal battle in which he is losing custody of his daughter, major financial problems and the emotional effects of the downward spiral of his career. Last night I watched Steven Seagal’s newest film Against the Dark, and I can tell you, it would have been a much better career move for Seagal to have made a film about his own spiraling career rather than star in another movie that is speeding up the freefall.

The movie opens with a preposterously long action sequence in which Van Damme is hurtling through an elaborate action set like your typical action b-movie hero, but all of the moves are a little bit off. The timing isn’t quite right, punches miss, and he’s not exactly on his marks. It doesn’t look well for the movie, until a set wall tumbles over and a panting Van Damme complains to the director (a childish snob more interested in throwing darts at a picture of Hollywood than he is in the movie he is supposed to be making – this tiny character is one of the movie’s only real weak spots) that he’s 47 years old and it’s really hard for him to do everything in one take.

He leaves the set and we follow him into some version of his real life. There is a scene where he is negotiating with his agent, and he explains that he doesn’t want to work in bad movies anymore where the majority of the entire budget is taken up by his own salary. “I’ll work for scale,” he says, “just get me into a studio.” We also learn of a rivalry between himself and Seagal where any excessive negotiating will just result in roles going to Seagal, who has “promised to cut off his ponytail for the first time.”

One day while trying to secure legal fees, he goes to the bank and walks right into the middle of a robbery, and the robbers sieze the opportunity to make it seem as though Van Damme were the criminal, leading to a tense stand-off involving the media, the entire town, and his mother. Van Damme has made a career out of being a tough guy, so it takes a particular style of bravery to make a movie about him as a real man in a situation where he is helpless to stop the violance that’s taking place around him. He’s not a superhuman, he’s just a guy, and when he gets hit in the side of the head with a handgun it will lay him out just like anyone else.

But this is a totally different tact than he has ever taken before, it’s a totally different idea, in fact, than I can ever remember seeing in any movie. He has one scene that is an artsy monologue given directly to the camera that a lot of critics have complained about, but it is one of the best shots of the year, one of the most unflinchingly honest performances I’ve ever seen from an action movie star, and by far the single best piece of acting that Van Damme has ever done in his career.

I don’t know how much of this is real about Van Damme’s real life, but I love the way he pokes fun at himself and his genre, particularly his relationship with Seagal. But it’s important to realize that not all of this is poking fun. It is a scathingly honest admittance of the realities of Van Damme’s life and the realities of the kinds of movies that he makes, and even what they all add up to.

In a way, JCVD attacks not only the limitations of Van Damme’s own career, but the shallowness and meaninglessness of so much of Hollywood at large. From that dart board at the beginning of the movie to Van Damme’s movie-star fantasy near the very end of the film, it shows us how much more effective and meaningful real life can be than movie magic. There is a place for both, but when one is forgotten completely, something important is lost.

The Bean Meter

4.5 Beans out of 5.