jean claude van damme in good movie

I just watched JCVD and it is easily the best movie I have seen since I watched Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino yesterday morning (there really is something to be said for a baby who needs a long nap first thing in the morning and who demands that she lies on you while she has it). This is a post-modern deconstruction of the JCVD action movie hero as seen in lots of bad movies over the years. JCVD plays himself and paints a sympathetic portrait of a slightly washed up, disallusioned, 47 years old, action man who has just lost custody if his daughter in part because of the violence that he has promoted in his movies. He now has one of those faces.  The movie is a skillful melding of fantasy and all the things you think you know about JCVD.  

The man himself is great and shows that he can actually act, so long as you allow him to speak in his native French. If you ever had even the slightest soft spot for JCVD, or even if you didn't, this is a movie worth seeing. If there is any justice in the world, JCVD should now have second career as a proper actor who occasionally kicks butt. I would give this movie 8/10.