I have never been a big fan of Jean Claude Van Damme. He definitely has the moves of a karate man, but he has never been much of an actor to say the least. I still vividly remember when I was watching “Cyborg” with my brother and a friend of his on the family VCR when I was back in junior high school. My dad even took the time to watch it, and he could not stop bagging on Van Damme throughout the whole monstrosity brought to us from the creative minds of Cannon Pictures. This is some of what he said:

“This is the single worst actor I have ever seen in my life! His face is completely immobile! He is like Stonehenge!”

Oh the memories! You’d figure after us seeing that movie that none of us would ever bother watching a movie with Van Damme ever again, but he was everywhere for a good portion of the late 80’s and early 90’s. “Bloodsport” was nothing extraordinary, but those fight scenes were pretty cool. “Death Warrant” was one I only saw because my best friend and movie buddy really wanted to check it out. It was alright, but that’s probably being a bit generous. I got a little pissed when that nerdy kid with glasses wanted to watch “Star Trek,” but the hot lady in that movie did not want to bother. She would rather be screwing Jean Claude who was taking a break from working undercover in a prison to catch a killer. Not all “Star Trek” fans are that geeky!

But after that unnecessary sequel to “Universal Soldier,” Jean Claude Van Damme ended up going from Hollywood movie star to the hell that is straight to video movies. During that time, he also went through drug problems and several divorces from several wives. I always wondered how people like Jean Claude or Steven Segal deal with going from big Hollywood action movies to direct to video crap that has now defined their careers to this very day. I can imagine that they are not too happy with the legacy that they are leaving behind in their wake. How do people deal with being at this place in their lives? On one hand, they are probably to be making a living doing what they do, but at the same time, I keep thinking they must miss where they were before all this crap happened to them.

“JCVD” is a fictionalized answer to that, and is not your typical Jean Claude Van Damme ass kicking epic. Jean Claude plays himself, and we can see in his face of what years of drugs, court battles, and many B movies have done to him. As the movie opens, we see him arguing with the director of his latest action movie, but the director is more interested in throwing darts at a postcard with the Hollywood sign on it then in listening to a man whose only distinction is getting John Woo to come to America with “Hard Target” (my favorite Van Damme movie by the way).

We see him at court fighting for custody of his daughter (one of them anyway), and the attorney for his ex-wife presents his action movies as arguments against him. They pile up so high that Van Damme ends up excusing himself to go to the bathroom while they are still being read off. Money problems keep mounting for him as he can’t get money out of the ATM, and his lawyer calls saying he still owes him money. Jean’s custody suit hits an impasse when his daughter says she doesn’t want to live with him because whenever a movie of his is on TV, she gets picked on by all the kids at school. Even worse, he just a film role to Steven Segal just because he offered to cut off his ponytail for the first time ever.

Suffice, being a fading action movie star is not easy, and doesn’t look like a lot of fun. Unlike Schwarzenegger, Van Damme has no political office to run for.

So we see Jean Claude head back to Belgium to reconnect with his roots and where he came from (hence his nickname “Muscles from Brussels”). In town, he has still treated as a big star and a hero, and a man who helped put them on the Hollywood map. But soon after, a hostage situation erupts at a nearby post office and (yes, I have to say it), all hell breaks loose. At first, it looks like he is the one robbing the post office, but events are seen from different perspectives, and it turns out that he has got into the wrong place at the wrong time. This time, he can’t rely on his martial arts moves to get him out of this. Jean Claude is not seen as an action hero here, but as a regular man who is caught up in a situation he has no control over.

“JCVD” is presented as a comedy/drama hybrid, and while the tone is a bit uneven, there are some very funny moments. We see one of the robbers buddy up with Jean Claude and talk to him about his movies, and even gets him to show one of his classic moves. While the other robbers couldn’t care less about him, this one wants his autograph. In the meantime, the townspeople (who clearly don’t know exactly what is going on inside) have come out in force to support Van Damme for what he is doing. In many ways, the movie is a look at the crazy nature of fame and how the center of attention is forever trapped in a prison because of it. It has some very funny moments as well as some sad ones where the fame is stripped back, and we see what is behind what is sold to us. It is in the vein of “Being John Malkovich” except not quite as imaginatively filmed (that’s a hard one to top anyway).

The big question I had when I went out to see this movie was has Jean Claude Van Damme actually gotten any better as an actor? I avoided his movies for so long, and I kept rolling my eyes at all the trailers for his movies. In the end, you see movies like “Bloodsport” for the action and nothing else. Even Los Angeles Times film critic Sam Adams in his review of this movie said that “most of the acting in Van Damme’s films takes place below the neck.”

But the answer here is yes, he has gotten better. In fact, in “JCVD” he is really good playing a fictionalized version of himself. My dad’s description of him as “Stonehenge” does not apply to him here, and while he will never be Laurence Olivier or Sean Penn, this movie bodes well for what we can expect from him in the future. I don’t know if this movie will his career a huge resurgence (this is his first theatrically released film in almost 10 years), but it will be interesting to see where he goes from here.

In fact, the movie has one tremendous moment of pure raw emotion from the Belgium action star when he suddenly rises above the film set of the movie he is in to talk to directly to the audience. His monologue lasts for several minutes, and he talks about he always wanted to be a movie star. After all this time, he feels as though as he is being punished for it. Granted, he admits mistakes that he has made like taking drugs, and you feel that he is still paying a price for that even while he is staying clean. Jean Claude never fakes a moment in this monologue, and it is the best scene of the entire movie. Seriously, it is worth the price of admission just to see this one moment in all its riveting emotion. Jean Claude has said that doing this movie is like therapy for him, and you can definitely see that on display here.

The concept of “JCVD” is by no means original. We have seen many stars play themselves in movies and have jokes played at their own expense to show that they have a healthy sense of humor about themselves. Some are more broadly comic than others, and some a little more serious. But while we have seen a lot of actors take this route like John Malkovich in “Being John Malkovich,” I can’t think of any other action movie stars who have put themselves on the line like this. I can’t see Chuck Norris doing this at all. I am sure he would rather be in another action movie where Mike Huckabee is the President of the United States, and he has to rescue him from being held hostage by pro-evolution terrorists. Heck, Steven Segal would probably rather make a movie where he fights to get his name cleared by the FBI after being caught up with that mafia guy, whatever his name was. But not Jean Claude, he doesn’t go that route.

If there was one big problem I had with “JCVD,” it’s that the movie’s subtitles were at times almost impossible to read. The movie, directed by Mabrouk El Mechri, is shot in a grungy style that is very close to black and white but not quite. As a result, the subtitles which are presented in white lettering almost blend completely into the background. I had to keep leaning forward in my seat to see just what exactly was being said. In the end, I don’t think I ever missed what was being said, but considering how ridiculously subtitle phobic people get at movies, this will certainly not help.

You really have to give Jean Claude Van Damme a lot of credit here. Not many action stars would even risk being seen like he is in “JCVD.” Here, he lays himself out bare to show us the man he has become through many mistakes and bad movies. You come out of it with a renewed respect for him, and it makes you want to see him get better. “JCVD” is not a great movie, but it is fun to watch and it kept me enthralled throughout its running time. It was a good time at the movies and I am glad that I got myself to check it out during its limited engagement in Los Angeles. Right now, Jean Claude Van Damme has nowhere to go but up.

*** out of ****

Well, it has been an interesting couple of weeks going into 2008. January actually provided us with one really good movie in “Cloverfield,” and the Oscar nominations were announced and many (but not all) got their die from the Academy. However, much of that has been shadowed by tragedy. We lost a couple of actors who left us with some great work, and yet they also left us way too soon. It’s a reminder of just how unfair life can seem.

Like all of you, the death of Heath Ledger was such a shock that it seemed almost unbelievable. I kept hearing people talk about him while I was passing the halls of my cubicle dungeon, and I wondered why people were talking about him so much in the first place. Then one of my colleagues who was sitting right across from me found out that Heath had died, and my eyes were wide open. I immediately checked out the CNN.com website, and saw it right there on the front page. I was shocked and infuriated all at the same time. How dare we lose another young actor so soon! I haven’t felt that strongly about any actor’s death since Christopher Penn died about a year ago. I remember talking about it with a friend of mine, and we both agreed:

“This blows!”

When it comes to the death of celebrities, we almost always remember where we were when we got the news of their demise. My dad keeps telling me that the day John Lennon died was the saddest day of his life. It was so senseless what happened to him, and like many others, my dad had just about every vinyl record made by the Beatles (he has since upgraded to CDs). I remember reading about River Phoenix’s death in the newspaper while my mom was talking to me about something (I don’t remember what). Seeing that, I couldn’t speak for about a minute. I refused to believe at the time that his death was drug related, thinking that River would be too smart to fall into that pit of self-destruction. Shows you what I knew back then.

Heath Ledger’s and Brad Renfro’s collective deaths will now be forever burned into my conscious mind for as long as I live. The tragedy of two young people gone at such a young age is something that seems impossible to get completely over. Many complain that lots of people die young and don’t get anywhere near the same amount of publicity. As a result, many see this as saying that these two actors are way more important than anyone else. I say bullshit to that, and I don’t think anyone else out there wants to put a lesser meaning on those who have passed in the same manner. It’s just that we can’t help but feel this way about Heath and Brad because whether we knew them personally or not, they were a big part of our lives whether we wanted them to be or not. We felt like we knew them, even if their personal lives are really none of our business.

Heath’s death feels especially tragic in that he was an actor who had finally come into his own thanks to his astounding performance in “Brokeback Mountain.” This was a performance he must have been impatiently waiting to give. He had spent the last couple of years beforehand sabotaging his career with several crappy movies so that he could break out of the teen heartthrob that the studios wanted to sell him as. But like Johnny Depp, he didn’t want to be seen as a product. With “Brokeback Mountain,” he managed to break out of that mold forever, and we were eager to see what he would do next.

Ever since laying eyes on his interpretation of The Joker in this summer’s “The Dark Knight,” I have no doubt that his performance will be nothing short of astonishing. While Jack Nicholson’s version of The Joker in Tim Burton’s “Batman” was a hoot to say the least, you already got the sense that Ledger’s take is more than likely to stand on its own. Now that Heath has died, watching his performance in that movie will seem all the more eerie.

It was hard to find the words how I felt about all of this. It seems clear now that there was an obscene amount of presumption on the part of the press in assuming (but not knowing) how he died. We are in no position to make assumptions on anybody’s death until we have all the facts. Just because there were sleeping bills and a rolled up $20 dollar bill next to bed seemed license enough to see Ledger as another actor who got caught up in a world of drugs that ended up destroying him completely. I don’t typically read the news as much as I used to, and that’s mainly because I don’t believe much of anything that is told to me anymore. I try to reserve judgment when it comes to situations like this because what I end up thinking about it ends up saying more about me than anyone else. That also goes for anyone who rushed to judge Heath in an unfair manner.

My guess is that Heath died of a sudden heart attack. I hear he was having trouble sleeping to the point where he was getting about 2 hours of sleep a night while making “The Dark Night.” I have heard some say that you can’t die from insomnia, but there has got to be a point where the body just gives out and can’t take anymore. The same thing happened years ago to comedian Robin Harris who you remember from Spike Lee joints like “Do The Right Thing” or “Mo Better Blues.” He went without sleep for days and days, and then one day he went to sleep and never woke up. Now there was another talented man who went before his time.

Now some may have seen Brad Renfro’s death coming from a mile away, but I doubt that. Granted, he had become more famous for his run ins with the laws and for his substance abuse problems than anything else. But if you peel that back a little, you will find a very strong film actor who was no flash in the pan. Many may know him best from “The Client” which is one of many John Grisham adaptations made back in the 1990’s, and he was plucked from obscurity by Joel Schumacher to be cast in the role of a young boy who witnesses a murder. It was a strong debut, and he did a lot of great work after that.

Another strong performance from Brad was in the movie “Apt Pupil,” a Bryan Singer movie that was an adaptation of a Stephen King novel/short story. I actually didn’t care for the movie that much, but the performances were very strong regardless. Brad more than held his own with Ian McKellan as a high school student who discovers that he is living right near a man who was a member of the Nazi party, and who participated in the execution of many Jews in the death camps. Renfro never shied away from portraying the darker aspects of a character who was just a young teenage boy who proved to be wise beyond his years.

But the performance I remember him best for was in Larry Clark’s “Bully.” It was no surprise that this was a very controversial movie, as it was directed by the same man who helmed the highly controversial “Kids,” a movie as brilliant as it was psychologically damaging to sit through. Here, Brad played a high school dropout named Marty who has no real direction in life, and who is endlessly harassed by his “best friend” Bobby Kent (Nick Stahl) who has been treating Marty like his kicking toy since he was a little kid. It’s a very raw performance by Brad, as he plays a kid who has nothing around him to really challenge him as an individual, and who eventually finds a desperate solution to his problem by taking the life of the supposed friend who never stopped abusing him. You despised Marty for what he and his friends for what they did, and yet you feel the tragedy of the character for not knowing a better solution to his problems. Brad totally immersed himself into the character to where you couldn’t tell if he was acting or not.

Brad continued to do a lot of great work in independent movies like “Ghost World” and others that were not seen by many upon their initial release. Who knows what he could have done had he lived.

Seeing Brad and Heath leave us so suddenly is frustrating beyond all repair and infuriating as hell. Hopefully, history will look on them kindly as two young actors who did great work and who left indelible marks in the world of cinema that are not easily forgotten. Their loss is felt deeply and will not be easily forgotten.

Rest in peace Heath Ledger and Brad Renfro.