Mai stato un grande fan del
Gian-Claudio; certo, ho visto qualche suo film, ma non si può dire che lo abbia mai ammirato a morte (né disprezzato, del resto).
Non ci si poteva però far scappare un
biopic meta-film come
JCVD - ed in effetti sarebbe stato un grave errore.
Jean-Claude Van Damme è nel bel mezzo di una causa per l'affidamento della figlia; la vita che fa ed i film che interpreta naturalmente non lo aiutano a far valere le sue ragioni.
Torna quindi in
Belgio, alla ricerca di un po' di pace; per coprire alcune necessità economiche, si reca allo sportello bancario di un semplice ufficio postale, dove verrà però coinvolto in una rapina.
Tanto per peggiorare ulteriormente le cose, le circostanze faranno sì che tutti si convincano che sia lui in persona, a capo della banda di rapinatori.
Film a (lunghi) tratti geniale, che sviscera tutte i temi che ci si può aspettare da un meta-film su un attore specializzato in pellicole d'arti marziali a bugdget medio-basso, e molto di più.
Dove davvero si distingue è nella meticolosa realizzazione, davvero perfetta nonostante (o forse grazie al fatto che) una parte significativa dei dialoghi siano stati improvvisati. Funziona la parte d'azione (o parodia d'azione), la parte divertente (fantastico come viene tirato in ballo
Steven Seagal), la meta-storia semi-biografica e - numi - tutto sommato funziona anche come thriller drammatico.
Di tutto rispetto la regia di
Mabrouk El Mechri, che ci delizia con un eterno (di nuovo:
meta-) piano sequenza d'azione fin dai titoli di testa, così come la sceneggiatura ed i dialoghi. Ottimamente gestita poi, la line temporale non lineare.
Tutto sommato degni tutti gli interpreti, ovviamente Van Damme svetta e compie qualcosa che somiglia ad un miracolo cinematografico. Recita. O forse no, ma comunque lo fa
bene.
[piccolo spoiler che non svela nulla della trama] E poi a metà film c'è uno dei più grandi monologhi della storia del cinema: quasi 6 minuti di faccia-a-faccia con Van Damme che sfonda il quarto muro e si confessa. Voto: 8.5. Notevole, sul serio. PS:
"Jean-Claude Van Damme sta rapinando l'ufficio postale: mi servono rinforzi!" .png)
Tags: azione, drammatico, biopic, biografico, meta-film, meta-cinema, Jean-Claude Van Damme, JCVD, Van Damme, Belgio, polizia, ufficio postale, ostaggi, rapina, soldi, negoziatore, medico, assalto, sparatoria, morte, omicidio, complici, telefono, star, attore, divorzio, affidamento, causa, processo, soldi, fallimento, nervosismo, taxista, videonoleggio, rapinatore, errore, telecamere, riprese, televisioni, avvocato, agente, denaro, prigione, thriller, piano sequenza, confessione, primo piano, monologo, quarto muro, parodia, film indipendente.
JCVD (2008)
JCVD - Nessuna giustizia
Regista: Mabrouk El Mechri Scrittore: Mabrouk El Mechri,
Frédéric Benudis Genere: Drama, Crime
Valutazione: 7.4/10 (13907 voti)
Durata: 97 min
Paese: Belgium, Luxembourg, France
Lingua: French, English
Cast:Trama:Between his tax problems and his legal battle with his wife for the custody of his daughter, these are hard times for the action movie star who finds that even Steven Seagal has pinched a role from him! In JCVD, Jean-Claude Van Damme returns to the country of his birth to seek the peace and tranquility he can no longer enjoy in the United States.
Trivia random: Jean-Claude Van Damme actually has a son, but it was to changed in the movie to a daughter for legal reasons. Mabrouk El Mechri claims the daughter's name, Gloria, came to him because he was listening to the Van Morrison song of the same name.
Citazione random: Policier: Central to Unit 27. Jean-Claude Van Damme's robbing a post office. I need back-up.
Filmography links and data courtesy of IMDb.
Van Damme, Jean-Claude
Nome di battesimo: Van Varenberg, Jean-Claude Camille François
Data di nascita: 18 October 1960
Altezza: 5' 9" (1.75 m)
Coniuge: Gladys Portugues::(25 June 1999 - present), Darcy LaPier::(3 February 1994 - November 1997) (divorced) 1 child, Gladys Portugues::(3 January 1987 - 1992) (divorced) 2 children, Cynthia Derderian::(24 August 1985 - 1986) (divorced), Maria Rodriguez::(25 August 1980 - 1984) (divorced)
Ultimi lavori: Biografia:Born on Oct 18 1960, Jean-Claude Van Damme is the son of Eugene Van Varenberg and Eliana Van Varenberg. "The Muscles from Brussels" originally known as Jean-Claude Van Varenberg, started martial arts at the age of 11. His father Eugene Van Varenberg introduced him to martial arts when he saw his son was physically weak. Jean-Claude started with Shotokan Karate and later studied Kickboxing, Taekwon-Do, and Muay Thai. He won the European professional karate association's middleweight championship as a teenager, and also beat the 2nd best karate fighter in the world. His goal was to be number one but got sidetracked when he left his hometown of Brussels. He came to Hong Kong at the age of 19 for the first time and felt insured to do action movies in Hong Kong. So in 1981 Van Damme left Hong Kong and moved to Los Angeles, where he was trying for 5 years. He took English classes while working as carpet layer, pizza delivery man, limo driver, and thanks to Chuck Norris he got a job as a bouncer at a club. Norris gave Van Damme a small role in the movie Missing in Action (1984), but it wasn't good enough to get anybody's attention. Then in 1984 he got a role as a villain named Ivan in the low-budget movie No Retreat, No Surrender (1986). Then one day, while walking on the streets, Jean-Claude spotted a producer for Cannon Pictures, and showed some of his martial arts abilities which led to a role in Bloodsport (1988). But the movie, filmed in Hong Kong, was so bad when it was completed, it was shelved for almost two years. It might have never been released if Van Damme did not help them to recut the film and begged producers to release it. They finally released the film, first in Malaysia and France and then into the U.S. Shot on a meager 1.5 million dollar budget, it became a U.S box-office hit in the spring of 1988. It made about 30 million worldwide and audiences supported this film for its new sensational action star Jean-Claude Van Damme. His martial arts assets, highlighted by his ability to deliver a kick to an opponent's head during a leaping 360-degree turn, and his good looks led to starring roles in higher budgeted movies like Cyborg (1989), Lionheart (1990), Double Impact (1991) and Universal Soldier (1992). In 1994, he scored with his big breakthrough $100 million worldwide hit Timecop (1994). But in the meantime, his personal life was coming apart. A divorce, followed by a new marriage, followed by another divorce. It began to show up in his career when his projects began to tank at the box office - The Quest (1996), which he directed; Maximum Risk (1996) and Double Team (1997). The three films made less than $50 million combined. In 1999 he remarried his ex-wife Gladys Portugues and restarted his lost career to attain new goals. With help from his family he faced his problems and made movies like Replicant (2001), Derailed (2002), and In Hell (2003) which did averagely in box office terms, but he tried to give his fans the best, his acting in those movies got better, more emotional and each movie was basically in different action tones.
Trivia random: Was a European Middle Weight Champion in Karate in his late teens.
Citazione random: Ten, 15 years ago, Sly, Arnold, those guys, were well-built; of course, they had to act and find good scripts, but today action heroes don't have to be Mr. Muscles. What really helps a guy to become an action hero today is the directing of the movie. All those fast cuts.
Salario massimo: $6,200,000, per Street Fighter (1994)
Filmography links and data courtesy of IMDb.
El Mechri, Mabrouk
Coniuge: Audrey Dana::(? - ?)
Ultimi lavori:
Filmography links and data courtesy of IMDb.
Seagal, Steven
Nome di battesimo: Seagal, Steven F.
Data di nascita: 10 April 1951
Altezza: 6' 4" (1.93 m)
Coniuge: Kelly LeBrock::(5 September 1987 - 1996) (divorced) 3 children, Miyako Fujitani::(December 1974 - 1987) (divorced) 2 children
Ultimi lavori: Biografia:Steven Seagal is a striking and somewhat boyishly handsome looking (often with ponytail) and usually impeccably dressed action star who burst onto the martial arts film scene in 1988 in the fast-paced Warner Bros. film Above the Law (1988). The enigmatic Seagal commenced his martial arts training at the age of seven under the tutelage of well-known karate instructor and author Fumio Demura, and in the 1960s commenced his aikido training in Orange County, CA, under the instruction of Harry Ishisaka. Seagal received his first dan accreditation in 1974, after he had moved to Japan to further his martial arts training. After spending many years there honing his skills, he achieved the ranking of a 7th dan in the Japanese martial art "aikido" and was instructing wealthy clients in Los Angeles when he came to the attention of Hollywood power broker Michael Ovitz. Ovitz saw star value in the imposing-looking Seagal. The high-octane action movie genre was in full swing in the late 1980s, and Seagal's debut movie, "Above the Law", was wildly received by action fans and actually received some complimentary critical reviews. He followed up "Above the Law" with another slam-bang thriller, Hard to Kill (1990), as a cop shot in an ambush by the mob who revives from a coma to take his revenge. The movie also starred Seagal's wife at the time, leggy Kelly LeBrock, who was married to him from 1987 to 1996 and is the mother of three of his children. His next outing was battling voodoo-using Jamaican drug "posses" in the hyper-violent Marked for Death (1990), before returning to fight psychotic mob gangster William Forsythe in the even more punishing Out for Justice (1991). Seagal was by now enormously popular, and his next movie, the big-budgeted Under Siege (1992), set aboard the battleship USS Missouri and also starring Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey, was arguably his best film to date, impressing both fans and critics alike. Seagal's fighting style was rather different from that of other on-screen martial arts dynamos such as Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme, who were predominantly fighters from striking arts background such as karate or tang soo do. However, aikido is built around using an opponent's inertia and body weight to employ various locks, chokes and holds that incapacitate him. Seagal carries himself differently, too, and often appears wearing Italian designer clothes and usually favors an all-black outfit, generally with a three-quarter-length coat with an elaborate trim. Additionally, Seagal's on-screen characters were often seemingly benign or timid individuals; however, when the going gets rough they reveal themselves to be deadly ex-CIA operatives, or retired Special Forces soldiers capable of enormous destruction! As his box-office drawing power grew, Seagal began to infuse his film projects with his personal and spiritual beliefs, especially concerning the abuse of the environment. He appeared as an oil fire expert who turns against his corrupt CEO (played by Michael Caine) in On Deadly Ground (1994) to save the Eskimo population from an oil disaster; in Fire Down Below (1997) he plays an environmental agency troubleshooter investigating the dumping of toxic waste in Kentucky coal mines, and in the slow-moving The Patriot (1998) he plays a medical specialist trying to stop a lethal virus unleashed by an extremist group. Action fans struggled to come to terms with social messaging being built into bone-crunching fight films; however, Seagal's box-office clout remained fairly strong, and more traditional chopsocky projects followed with the "buddy cop" film The Glimmer Man (1996), then almost a cameo role as a Navy SEAL alongside CIA analyst Kurt Russell before Seagal is sucked out of a jet at 35,000 feet in Executive Decision (1996). In 1999 Seagal took a different turn in his film projects with the surprising genteel Prince of Central Park (2000), about a child living inside NYC's most famous park. He returned to more familiar territory with further high-voltage, guns-blazing action in Exit Wounds (2001), Half Past Dead (2002), Out for a Kill (2003) (V) and Belly of the Beast (2003) (V). Unbeknownst to many, in 1997 Seagal publicly announced that one of his Buddhist teachers, His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, had accorded Seagal as a tulku, the reincarnation of a Buddhist Lama. This initial announcement was met with some disbelief until Penor Rinpoche himself gave a confirmation statement on Seagal's new title. Seagal has repeatedly discussed his involvement in Buddhism and how he devotes many hours studying and meditating this ancient Eastern religion. While his box-office appeal has somewhat declined from his halcyon blockbusters of the mid-'90s, Seagal still has a very loyal fan base in the action movie genre and continues to remain a highly bankable star.
Trivia random: Father of Kentaro Seagal and Ayako Fujitani.
Citazione random: Action films are great, but an action film that has characters that are compelling and a story that people can care about is something even better. We love to see action heroes that are vulnerable, that are sensitive, that are family people, that are accessible.
Filmography links and data courtesy of IMDb. 
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