Not exactly an airtight plot (a scorecard might have helped), but often winningly effective actioner for Jean-Claude Van Damme’s aging Muscles from Brussels. Fifty-eight at the time, he looks as if he’s been aged in oak, adding a welcome patina of character interest his younger self never had.* Director Julien Leclercq, who co-wrote with Jérémie Guez, has Van Damme’s overqualified Techno-Club bouncer, a widower with a young daughter, literally beat out a gaggle of applicants for a higher paying/more dangerous position at a pricey, if louche strip club that turns out to be something of a front for underworld activities. Quickly moving up the syndicate’s chain of command, he’s soon deeply involved in their complicated racket but also protecting his back as a police informer. Then again, just how dirty are the 'good' guys? Here’s where that scorecard might come in handy. No matter, Leclercq runs fistfuls of sharp kinetic set pieces (one in a parking garage a real humdinger) and finds a satisfying release that leaves just enough up in the air. But it’s Van Damme’s grown up appeal, the wised-up/beaten down innocent who makes this one hum.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In a sure sign of Van Damme’s diminished commercial clout, note the film’s English-language version was not the original track. Well dubbed, but what did they speak on set? French? Flemish?
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Not sure when Van Damme started to test himself as an older screen figure. Was it in JCVD/’08? https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/08/jcvd-2008.html
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