JCVD vs My Name is Bruce

Many readers probably have not seen either of these films. They both feature actors playing themselves who must deal with the conflict of their own lives.

In MY NAME IS BRUCE, Bruce Campbell plays an absolute parody of himself as an actor who cannot ever find good movies and lives in a very bad trailer. He is then abducted by an obsessed friend and brought to a small town to defeat a real-monster with his fan thinking that he is really the guy in the movies where Bruce thinks someone is playing a prank on him as a publicity stunt but then realizes the monster is real and has really only learned from his movies. For those of you that do not know who Bruce Campbell is, he stars in a lot of b-films while making cameos in a lot of a-list films like the SPIDER-MAN series but is possibly playing Mysterio in the fourth one. He is most known for playing the role of Ash the EVIL DEAD trilogy which made both him and director Sam Raimi famous. He was also in some tv shows like THE ADVENTURES OF BRISCO COUNTY JR., JACK OF ALL TRADES, XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS, and BURN NOTICE. My favorite movie of his is BUBBA HO-TEP where he plays an aging man claiming to be Elvis and I also really liked Brisco County Jr. which I thought was canceled way too soon. He also directed and starred in THE MAN WITH THE SCREAMING BRAIN which my dad called "genius". He has also done some pretty bad movies like ALIEN APOCALYPSE but does it so well we forget. I also read his great autobiography IF CHINS COULD KILL: CONFESSIONS OF A B-MOVIE ACTOR. He has quite a following but unfortunately many don't know who he is.

JCVD features martial-arts star and real-life fighter Jean-Claude Van Damme who is most known for his action and martial arts films. His most known work is things like KICKBOXER, LIONHEART, and my favorite until JCVD which is TIMECOP. I used to watch him some in the 80s and early 90s but has confined a lot to these straight to tv action films. In JCVD, he plays himself and is going back to his country of France where he is doing another pointless action film and finds that age is catching up with him when filming an action scene and becomes hard to work with. He later finds that he loses his role to Steven Seagal and is also in a custody battle with his daughter. All this becomes trivial when he becomes part of a hostage situation at a post office where he must rely on his skills he has learned through the years but to make things worse, the people holding the place hostage make it look like he is the one doing it.

Both movies are rather similar but MNIB is far more comedic than JCVD. Bruce Campbell directed this movie with a very exaggerated characterization of himself and I'm pretty sure he does not live in a little, beat-up trailer. JCVD has some comedic moments and some rather comedic dialogue at times but is more believable where we can relate to Van Damme and see him in a whole new light. It is sad that it took a movie like this in order to do that and I do not feel this movie has been promoted enough as well as MNIB. I believe both movies accomplished what they wanted. I love the beginning of JCVD where it starts out looking like it will be just another Van Damme film and the he tires from all the filming in the one take due to his age. He also made a really awesome monologue reflecting on his career. The monologue did not have much to do with the film but is well worth seeing it and is what people in the wrestling industry a "shoot". From what I understand, JCVD was originally going to be more comedic but Mabrouk El Mechri was brought in to rewrite the script then direct.

In the end, it is really a hard decision for me to make for a winner. I am a bigger fan of Bruce Campbell but Van Damme probably had the better performance of the two. Bruce still played himself very well. If you think Jean-Claude is not a good actor, please check this out. I remember seeing this on the shelf at Wal-Mart and as soon as I saw Jean-Claude Van Damme I was about to blow it off until I read the back of it and saw that this might be pretty good. I am now glad I got that one. With MY NAME IS BRUCE, that is something you might only get into if you are a fan of Bruce which I am. If you haven't seen much of his work then you might not get it and you might not get some of the jokes. I will just admit that I have a bias towards Bruce and with that for me MY NAME IS BRUCE wins out. However, JCVD is the one I want to have more publicity since we all know Van Damme and the types of movies he has done. With JCVD, he acknowledges he has done a lot of bad movies and is quite a has-been and finally gets to show more of his acting talent instead of his great fight skills. I really encourage people to check these movies out and give me your own decision on who wins.

I have been planning this for a couple weeks now where last week I did a review which might have been more of a summary on THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES. In here I wanted to do a compare/contrast of these two which I know many have not seen but felt it was time to give these more publicity even though I have in my blog. I hope that someone will do something like this for Steven Seagal who at one time made some pretty decent action films but is now just getting tv movies. Don't forget to check out my weekly movie recommendations blog and stay tuned on Sunday for the 211th Edition.