The MUSCLES FROM BRUSSELS tries to DISEMBARRASS IN PARIS
The second-act counter-punch of Jean- Claude Van Damme
He kicked the air on the red carpet – so that his foot seemed to stop about an inch away from the fusillade of flashing cameras. It was the world premiere of his new miniseries with Amazon Video, a lavish sold- out jamboree at Le Grand Rex cinema in Paris. Several thousand adoring French action-freaks howled with excitement as the screen legend preceded them into the largest theatre in Europe, pausing at the art-deco entrance to strike a charismatic tough- guy pose for the media. Tuxedo-clad, with a cock-a-hoop grin, he preened and punched, flexed and karate-chopped.
Mos t other movie s t ars would be in a hurry to dispense with this part of the evening; they would endeavour to rush through the requisite photo-call and compulsory red- carpet formalities. But not Jean- Claude Van Damme. It has been quite a long time since the Muscles from Brussels commanded the attention of cameras wielded by the press rather than the paparazzi, and quite a long time indeed since his presence in a picture was enough to draw a crowd. Van Damme’s last dozen or so movies have not occasioned a berserk run on theatre seats or ravenous clamour at the box office. Van Damme has barely had a movie play in a cinema for 15 years: he’s been banished to the purgatory of directto- video – or, more recently, direct- to-VOD. So you can forgive Jean- Claude his pride in the spotlight. This was the first night in ages that the action star had been treated like one.
In the early 1990s, when he was in his early 30s, JCVD was the luminous third constituent of an international action- hero triumvirate that reigned uncontested for more than a decade. If he was perhaps slightly less popular than Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone as an actor, he was better respected as a martial artist and stunt performer – the Harold Lloyd to their Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. His movies made hundreds of millions of dollars. By the turn of the millennium, he was a pariah seemingly doomed to exile from Hollywood, scraping work in best- forgotten cheapies with titles like The Hard Corps and Until Death. Now, at 57, Van Damme is poised before the unlikely prospect of career resuscitation. He’s shaking off the taint of ruin and ascending toward triumph again.
How can it be possible? One answer is Jean- Claude Van Johnson, the curiously named, extravagantly budgeted production whose arrival we have converged this week in Paris to witness. Another answer, a simple answer, is Amazon. As Van Damme sees it, you can’t make a return to Hollywood if Hollywood doesn’t want anything to do with you. But you can make a return to the mainstream if what’s mainstream isn’t strictly Hollywood anymore. Ingeniously, JCVD took a shortcut back to stardom by skirting round the traditional route. He explained to me the strategy in his unmistakable Belgian accent. “You have the studios, and if you play studio rules and if you’re a good boy, the studio loves you, right? Okay, whatever, I did have some problems with the studio, so I disappear for a couple of years, out of the map, in terms of theatrical, right? But thank God that Amazon is so big that it came from behind everything.”
Yes, it came from behind – and came with money, with talent, with ideas. They brought Dave Callaham, a buzzy upstart screenwriter responsible for The Expendables and Godzilla, and they brought Peter Atencio, a director known for television (he worked extensively on Comedy Central’s Key & Peele) whose knack for action-comedy was in evidence in last year’s Keanu, his debut feature. And Jean-Claude was duly roused by the fillip of serious collaborators, of legitimate names. “Understand something,” he told me, clearing his throat for confession. “I’ve done many movies, but not all of them were high-budget or well- directed, you know? Firsttime director, DP as director, two guys directing, movies made by stunt coordinators. It’s true! With Peter and Dave it became a different story.” For Jean- Claude this seemed not merely a chance to make something different. It was a chance to make something good.
Jean- Claude Van Johnson is the sort of clever project an unrecognized actor yearns for. Part True Lies, part The Player, and part Charlie Kaufman, it is a witty, expensive, self- referential comic blockbuster in which Van Damme, playing his aging washed-up self, works part-time as a real-life secret agent, travelling the globe under the aegis of low- budget action pictures in order to sabotage international drug rings and annihilate terrorist cells. The six- episode, three- hour first season, which JCVD insists is “more like a movie than TV,” is often funny ( if sometimes broad), intermittently smart about the movie business ( if more than once guilty of its own accusations), and at times as thrilling as any vintage Van Damme feature ( if equally ludicrous as the same). As comebacks go, it isn’t exactly John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. But it’s fun and thoughtful — and, most admirably, it feels like it was made by people who care.
“This show is totally different than other TV shows in terms of quality … such a good script … a great show … so beautiful … just fantastic … just perfect.” This praise of Jean Claude Van Johnson does not come from television critics. ( The show currently holds a 60% rating on Metacritic, which tracks and aggregates reviews.) It comes from Jean- Claude Van Damme. He couldn’t help but raving. Now, I have interviewed many actors about many projects, and I am well-accustomed to hearing rapturous affirmations in inter- views. But never in my career as a journalist and critic has someone impressed upon me with such candour and conviction their belief in the calibre of the work they’re promoting. “This is my best movie,” he told me outright. “Not because it’s now. It’s really my best film. If something happened to me today, it’s okay. Honestly. I would be happy because this show is what I left behind.”
Jean- Claude brought his mother and his father to the premiere. (“The kids, too,” he said after. “All my family. In France!”) It’s difficult to imagine one of the most famous movie stars on the planet, a millionaire dozens of times over, needing to prove anything at this point. But it really sounded as though JC wanted to show off to his loved ones – to remind them that he had not in fact receded into obscurity, or perhaps to remind himself. It was touching. I asked Jean-Claude whether the family liked what they saw. “Oh, yeah, they loved it, they loved it,” he said. “They did not expect it to be such a great show.” One wonders what Mama and Papa Van Damme did expect, though. Are they inured at this point to the typical late-JCVD lunacy? To the paltry budgets and nonexistent inspiration? It occurs to the student of character that Jean- Claude is not so much proud of the scale or legitimacy of Jean- Claude Van Johnson. What he’s proud of is the opportunity – all too rare – to make something entirely without shame.
Is Jean- Claude Van Damme a confident man? This seems a silly question to ask about a guy with a black belt and a mansion in Beverly Hills. But consider how he talks about himself, how he regards his own contributions as a thespian.
“Are you happy with your acting, Jean- Claude?” I chance to ask.
“It’s like … did you saw Tom Cruise in Cocktail?” “Yes.” “Did you saw Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July?” “Of course.” “It’s that simple. If you put Tom Cruise in my movies … well, I wish him luck. And Arnold and Stallone too, to make those types of movies and be successful. What I like about the new show is they took me, they took my physicality, but they add love and drama and they add other dimensions I can play. I felt insecure about it, about doing it well, but I knew I could always go back to the same spot on my safety wheel, which is ‘Jean- Claude Van Damme’, that type of guy, you know? The whole thing, it could have been just another Van Damme movie, and that’s it. But it isn’t.”
JCVD is so justly pleased with his work in Jean- Claude Van Johnson that one can’t help but share his enthusiasm, however one feels about it as TV qua TV. It’s heartening to know that an Amazon series could, as he said to me earnestly, “give me back my confidence, and give me back happiness.” Jean- Claude deserves all the confidence and happiness in the world. Still, his legacy will doubtless remain uninfluenced by the show’s madcap globetrotting antics, nor by the thousands of fans streaming out of the Rex auditorium in high spirits after the Paris premiere who, rather than having gone forth and raved about Van Johnson, probably went home and rewatched some classic Van Damme. What the fans will remember, what history will remember, are Hard Target, Timecop, Sudden Death. History will remember Van Damme as ninjitsu hero Frank Dux in his first film, Bloodsport, jump-kicking his way to martial-arts glory.
I pointed out to Van Damme that the fans, shrieking when he stepped foot on the red carpet, took up a vigorous refrain: “Frank Dux! Frank Dux! Frank Dux!”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “And soon it’s gonna be, ‘ Jean- Claude Van Johnson!’”
Calum Marsh
Last week, Amazon announced it would not be renewing Jean- Claude Van Johnson for a second season. The series concludes after only six episodes.