He fights for money, for honor, for…child custody?! There's more
to the best movies of Jean-Claude Van Damme's career than you think.
By 1993, Jean-Claude Van Damme was a bona fide action star. That was the year he starred in
Nowhere to Run as dangerous antihero Sam Gillen. A hard-luck small-time criminal, he's on a prison
transfer bus when it crashes, allowing him to escape. He isn't about to go back to serving time
behind bars, but he also has no interest in a life of crime. So he lives on the fringes of a small
community before being discovered by a beautiful young woman named Clydie and her young children.
When a group of corrupt land developers tries to push Clydie and her family off their land,
Sam steps in and plays hero. Now at the center of a high-stakes tug of war and with cops closing in,
Sam has to stop pulling his punches if he's going to stay a free man and help his newfound
friends. A breezy, heartfelt adventure, Nowhere to Run is just the right mix of action and drama.
2018's The Bouncer is a dark character study of a beleaguered man named Lukas who settles for a
job as a strip club bouncer to support his young daughter after fleeing a murder charge and facing
jail time. Filmed in Van Damme's native French, this thriller follows Lukas as he struggles to
scrape by on the verge of poverty, torn between a life of crime and his duty as an informant.
The Bouncer scored positive marks from critics, who praised Van Damme's noirish turn in a dark,
moody film that doesn't ask him to wink to the camera. French director
Julien Leclercq was able to get a compelling performance out of
a star whose late career has mostly been marked by direct-to-video duds.
In 1991, Jean-Claude Van Damme and director Sheldon Lettich reunited for
twice the action in Double Impact. Van Damme stars as a pair of twin brothers,
Chad and Alex, separated as infants when their wealthy parents were gunned down in
a vicious attack by hitmen in Hong Kong in the 1960s. Chad is taken by the family bodyguard,
while Alex is left at an orphanage in China by their loyal maid.
Cut ahead to 1991 when Chad is lured to Hong Kong,
where he meets Alex, who has reunited them to get revenge on the man who killed their parents
and get their hands on their share of their inheritance. But their plan puts them in
the path of dangerous gangsters, drug lords, and violent assassins.
"I don't believe this. My brother?"
Double Impact gives Van Damme the opportunity to punch out, take down, and kick butt twice as hard.
The reviews, however, were half as kind, with few critics anticipating the action
classic this would become. At least Roger Ebert, in a shrugging two-star review,
noted the film's high production values and exotic setting, as he also declared,
"[Van Damme] seems thoroughly comfortable with his feet above his head,
a position many martial arts experts often find themselves in."
The 1994 sci-fi action adventure Timecop threw Van Damme into the future world of 2004,
where time travel has become a reality. Unfortunately, criminals have begun using
it to alter the past, forcing the creation of the Time Enforcement Commission,
tasked with traveling back in time and catching future criminals. Van Damme stars as Max Walker
and appears in two time periods, as a police officer in 1994 and a TEC agent in 2004.
In 1994, Walker is the target of mysterious assassins in a deadly bombing that leaves
his wife dead. A decade later, he learns that a powerful senator is using time travel as a
part of a conspiracy to attain power. It's up to Walker alone to set things right. But he's
also given the chance to save his wife, even if it means potential consequences for the future.
A thrilling joyride, Timecop is a deft mix of patented Van Damme action
and mind-bending plotting. It was the biggest hit of his heyday, grossing $102 million worldwide.
It wasn't exactly well-reviewed at the time, but over the years,
it's become a sci-fi cult classic, spawning a TV spin-off and a 2003 direct-to-DVD sequel.
Universal Soldier likely had little ambition to become a classic when it was released in 1992.
It was hardly a big-money blockbuster, but with Van Damme and co-star Dolph Lundgren,
it had a pair of action stars to fill out its compelling high-concept premise.
During the Vietnam War, U.S. Army soldier Luc Deveraux discovers that one of his comrades,
Sergeant Andrew Scott, has been brutalizing innocent civilians. They're both killed in a
deadly confrontation, only to be resurrected decades later in a secret government project
called the Universal Soldier Program. With cybernetic implants and bio-modifications,
they become unstoppable mindless killing machines.
An all-time sci-fi cult classic despite its less-than-stellar initial reception,
Universal Soldier kicked off a multipart saga,
including numerous sequels, as well as a line of comic books, video games, and more.
"I just want to eat."
In 2010, Sylvester Stallone assembled a team of veteran action heroes to create The Expendables,
an over-the-top action flick unlike any other. It starred Stallone alongside the likes of
Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews, and Dolph Lundgren. 2012's Expendables 2 added the biggest
missing piece from its predecessor, the Muscles from Brussels himself.
In the film, the titular team of veteran mercenaries go up against Van Damme as
the movie's main villain, the suitably named Jean Vilain, who leads his own gang of rival
mercenaries called the Sangs. They're both after the same thing: a computer data bank that holds
the location of five tons of enriched plutonium left over after the Cold War by the Soviet Union.
Van Damme goes to extraordinary scenery-chewing heights here, including one scene where he
kicks a bowie knife into Liam Hemsworth's chest. The film actually received decent
reviews and became the highest-grossing non-animated film of Van Damme's career.
Sudden Death was released in 1995, at the peak of Van Damme's star power. He takes on the role
of Darren McCord, a French-Canadian firefighter serving in Pittsburgh. But after failing to save
a family from a house fire, he's been relegated to a security job at the local sports stadium.
During the NHL Stanley Cup Finals, with the Pittsburgh Penguins squaring off against the
Chicago Blackhawks, terrorists seize control of the arena. With the Vice President in attendance,
the terrorists take a number of high-profile hostages
and threaten to blow up the arena that they've wired with powerful explosives. It now rests on
the shoulders of the downtrodden McCord to stop a madman and save the vice president.
"This is the most powerful plastic explosive in the world."
Sudden Death got mixed reviews but won over plenty of fans,
including a rave from the Los Angeles Times. It also features the best Van Damme fight ever,
in which he battles a penguin mascot to the death and utterly destroys a kitchen.
The first American film for Hong Kong director John Woo, the guns-blazing action flick Hard
Target is definitely a favorite for many a Jean-Claude Van Damme fan. In this outing,
he plays Chance Boudreaux, a homeless former Marine in New Orleans. After saving a young
woman named Natasha from a group of muggers on the street, he's hired to be her protection on a
mission to locate her missing father, a Vietnam veteran who's been living on the streets. As
the investigation unfolds, they uncover a scheme run by a group of sinister tycoons
who have been hunting the homeless for sport and who set Natasha and Chance as their next targets.
Reviews at the time were mixed, but the film is packed with arguably the best action of any of Van
Damme's films thanks to Woo's characteristically over-the-top touch. Nowadays, Hard Target is
seen as a landmark in the history of the genre, thanks in particular to Van Damme pulling off some
amazing stunts, like standing on a motorcycle while firing a gun at an oncoming vehicle.
"I've been looking all over for you."
"You've been looking in the wrong places."
1990's Lionheart sees Van Damme competing in street-level tournaments in the inner city.
He stars as Lyon Gaultier, whose fighting nickname is "Lionheart." To earn money
to travel westward and see his brother, he enters an illegal underground street fight,
joining a fledgling circuit of champions that caters to the wealthiest spectators.
Like his 1980s output, Lionheart wasn't exactly well-received by critics.
But the film gives Van Damme some real drama to chew on as well as some of the
best action of his early career. As Brian Orndorf of Blu-ray.com noted,
"The fight scenes are the highlights of Lionheart, allowing Van Damme to do what he does best,
trying to make believe that his opponents have a shot at dropping Lyon to his knees."
A year after 1988's Bloodsport made him a martial arts star, Van Damme returned to
the ring for Kickboxer, another no-holds-barred tournament fighter film. His unrelenting on-screen
fights are kicked up a notch, and the film boasts an even more powerful personal story.
Van Damme plays Kurt Sloane, fighting assistant to his brother Eric, the American kickboxing world
champion. Having conquered the American circuit more than once, Eric has grown bored and heads
to Thailand to compete against a more brutal breed of competitors. He's set to face off against the
vicious Tong Po, a massive mountain of a man who's merciless in the ring. Against Kurt's objections,
Eric fights the unstoppable Po and is so savagely beaten that he's left paralyzed.
Desperate for vengeance, Kurt finds a wise Muay Thai master who trains him
in the art of kickboxing and sends him on a quest to defeat Tong Po. The film's
blood-soaked climactic final match is one for the ages. It also spawned a series of sequels,
though Van Damme wouldn't return until the franchise was rebooted with Kickboxer:
Vengeance in 2016. And of course, we can't forget that iconic dance scene.
"Can you still dance like that? You still got those dance moves?"
"I still got the move."
The movie that made Jean-Claude Van Damme a star,
Bloodsport followed in the footsteps of fighting films like Rocky and The Karate Kid.
But Bloodsport featured a more intense and more graphic form of fighting,
as Van Damme got the chance to truly show off what a talent he was on screen. Admittedly, the plot
is rife with cliches, but that doesn't matter when our leading man is in peak physical form.
Inspired by a supposedly true story that wound up being completely phony,
the film stars Van Damme as Frank Dux, an American Army captain who competes in the Kumite,
a brutally violent Hong Kong fighting tournament. He makes an enemy in the form of Kumite champion
Chong Li, whom he'll have to defeat to win it all. Bloodsport was an instant hit,
and it remains a top dog in the Van Damme canon.
Unlike any film that he's made before or since, the crime drama JCVD
brought serious self-awareness as Van Damme turned to more serious fare. The year was 2008,
and he was nearly a decade removed from headlining a major Hollywood film, having starred in a series
of direct-to-DVD B-movies since then. But he still had a lot left in the tank, and so he delivered a
powerful performance that earned him rave reviews as an exaggerated, downtrodden version of himself.
The plot finds Van Damme struggling to find any work at all, let alone the kinds of action roles
from his glory days. On top of that, after a bitter court battle, he loses custody of
his daughter. Just as he's reached wits' end, he gets entangled in a bank robbery gone wrong, with
police believing him to be one of the thieves. While at first it's a case of mistaken identity,
Van Damme seizes on the opportunity to get money for himself. As the media gets wind
that the Hollywood hero has turned crook, the situation quickly escalates. Giving the
action star's career an existential kick, with a nearly 7-minute monologue about his public image,
JCVD serves as a reminder of the power that one's own legacy can hold.
"Stupid to kill people. They're so beautiful. So today I pray to God."