Article: Regeneration breathed life into both JCVD's career
Sept 8, 2017 18:17:47 GMT
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Post by Claudia on Sept 8, 2017 18:17:47 GMT
Universal Soldier: Regeneration breathed life into both Jean-Claude Van Damme's career and straight-to-DVD action
Tom Breihan
September 8, 2017
With A History Of Violence, Tom Breihan picks the most important action movie of every year, starting with the genre’s birth and moving right up to whatever Vin Diesel’s doing this very minute.
Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009)
In the 2008 Belgian movie JCVD, Jean-Claude Van Damme played a washed-up, deluded former action movie icon named Jean-Claude Van Damme. The Van Damme we see in the movie is a shell of his former self, a depressive husk recovering from various addictions and divorces, losing out all the best straight-to-video roles to Steven Seagal. In the course of the movie, he gets trapped in a post-office hostage situation, and all of his captors are fans of his work. In the movie’s centerpiece scene, Van Damme floats above the movie’s set, turns directly to the camera, and delivers a painfully sincere six-minute monologue that seems to emanate from the depths of his soul: “I still ask myself today: What have you done on this earth? Nothing. I’ve done nothing.” He cries. It’s intense.
JCVD marked one of the first Van Damme movies that could be seen on actual theater screens in years. Ever since 1998’s French Legion movie Legionnaire, he’d been consigned, or consigned himself, to the straight-to-video ghetto. Through most of the ’90s, he’d been an iconic B-movie star, a brand unto himself. But he made too many bad decisions, got hooked on too many drugs, and burned too many bridges, and his movies weren’t making money the way they had been. But then JCVD happened, and the people who’d forgotten about Van Damme were suddenly paying attention. He had critical acclaim, something he’d never had. His face, lined and wizened, was still handsome, but it was more interesting than when he was a young kickboxing mannequin. It looked like Van Damme was in line for some sort of triumphant career resurrection. Instead, the next movie he made was a straight-to-DVD Universal Soldier sequel. But fortunately for us, it was a really great straight-to-DVD Universal Soldier sequel.
Read here: www.avclub.com/universal-soldier-regeneration-breathed-life-into-both-1798679730
Tom Breihan
September 8, 2017
With A History Of Violence, Tom Breihan picks the most important action movie of every year, starting with the genre’s birth and moving right up to whatever Vin Diesel’s doing this very minute.
Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009)
In the 2008 Belgian movie JCVD, Jean-Claude Van Damme played a washed-up, deluded former action movie icon named Jean-Claude Van Damme. The Van Damme we see in the movie is a shell of his former self, a depressive husk recovering from various addictions and divorces, losing out all the best straight-to-video roles to Steven Seagal. In the course of the movie, he gets trapped in a post-office hostage situation, and all of his captors are fans of his work. In the movie’s centerpiece scene, Van Damme floats above the movie’s set, turns directly to the camera, and delivers a painfully sincere six-minute monologue that seems to emanate from the depths of his soul: “I still ask myself today: What have you done on this earth? Nothing. I’ve done nothing.” He cries. It’s intense.
JCVD marked one of the first Van Damme movies that could be seen on actual theater screens in years. Ever since 1998’s French Legion movie Legionnaire, he’d been consigned, or consigned himself, to the straight-to-video ghetto. Through most of the ’90s, he’d been an iconic B-movie star, a brand unto himself. But he made too many bad decisions, got hooked on too many drugs, and burned too many bridges, and his movies weren’t making money the way they had been. But then JCVD happened, and the people who’d forgotten about Van Damme were suddenly paying attention. He had critical acclaim, something he’d never had. His face, lined and wizened, was still handsome, but it was more interesting than when he was a young kickboxing mannequin. It looked like Van Damme was in line for some sort of triumphant career resurrection. Instead, the next movie he made was a straight-to-DVD Universal Soldier sequel. But fortunately for us, it was a really great straight-to-DVD Universal Soldier sequel.
Read here: www.avclub.com/universal-soldier-regeneration-breathed-life-into-both-1798679730