Daily Plastic: JCVD

Movie	Our Take	Other Takes
JCVD Trailer . IMDB	Unfortunately, JCVD is at its core an action movie, even though it uses Jean-Claude Van Damme's persona — from his movies and from what we imagine to be his real life — to layer a melancholy, humanizing, but eventually sidelined satire on top of it. Robert Davis Daily Plastic	While the filmmakers — and the star himself — gamely make fun of this legacy of mediocrity, they cannot quite escape it. This may well be the most memorable Jean-Claude Van Damme movie ever, but I’m afraid that’s not saying much. A.O. Scott New York Times That dynamite opening sequence, and the two or three scenes that follow, promise something like Van Damme's 8 1/2, a freeform journey into the star's cult of personality and the inevitable bleed between his screen persona and his real life. But the excitement gradually diminishes when the robbery, which initially seems like a pit-stop, instead becomes a permanent stall-out. Scott Tobias Onion AV Club Let's noodle on this: [W]here JCVD scores, transcends itself (and himself) and becomes something fairly sui generis, is in Van Damme's fourth-wall-breaking monologue. Suddenly levitating out of the diegetic heist, over the top of the set and into the light, Van Damme looks into the camera and delivers what can only be described as a confession, if not a last testament. Michael Sicinski The Academic Hack But now some probabilities about a man's inner banality: What's more, anything that's really inside this man, when stripped of all accoutrements of fiction, will [most] likely be so laughably banal that we'd be embarrassed to share that moment. Michael Sicinski The Academic Hack [I]t's really just a mediocre hostage drama with a few wan "meta" musings clumsily grafted on. Kickass opening shot is everything you've heard, but I nearly nodded off during Van Damme's allegedly mindblowing direct-to-camera monologue, which merely confirms him as a terrible actor. Mike D'Angelo The Man Who Viewed Too Much It’s the most amazing piece of acting I’ve ever seen by a martial artist. David Edelstein New York Magazine

While the filmmakers — and the star himself — gamely make fun of this legacy of mediocrity, they cannot quite escape it. This may well be the most memorable Jean-Claude Van Damme movie ever, but I’m afraid that’s not saying much.

A.O. Scott
New York Times

That dynamite opening sequence, and the two or three scenes that follow, promise something like Van Damme's 8 1/2, a freeform journey into the star's cult of personality and the inevitable bleed between his screen persona and his real life. But the excitement gradually diminishes when the robbery, which initially seems like a pit-stop, instead becomes a permanent stall-out.

Scott Tobias
Onion AV Club

Let's noodle
on this:

[W]here JCVD scores, transcends itself (and himself) and becomes something fairly sui generis, is in Van Damme's fourth-wall-breaking monologue. Suddenly levitating out of the diegetic heist, over the top of the set and into the light, Van Damme looks into the camera and delivers what can only be described as a confession, if not a last testament.

Michael Sicinski
The Academic Hack

But now some
probabilities
about a man's
inner banality:

What's more, anything that's really inside this man, when stripped of all accoutrements of fiction, will [most] likely be so laughably banal that we'd be embarrassed to share that moment.

Michael Sicinski
The Academic Hack

[I]t's really just a mediocre hostage drama with a few wan "meta" musings clumsily grafted on. Kickass opening shot is everything you've heard, but I nearly nodded off during Van Damme's allegedly mindblowing direct-to-camera monologue, which merely confirms him as a terrible actor.

Mike D'Angelo
The Man Who Viewed Too Much

It’s the most amazing piece of acting I’ve ever seen by a martial artist.

David Edelstein
New York Magazine