Showbits

Some films creatively walk the line between fiction and fact, though not all such ventures are cinematic successes. Although the crossovers (in both theme and cast) between the movie No Holds Barred and the then-WWF were interesting, neither half stood alone well. Still, the intersection has potential, and so I was intrigued when I saw the trailer for the film JCVD.

The movie stars 49-year-old Jean-Claude Van Damme, the "Muscles from Brussels", a down-on-his-luck has-been actor who needs money to pay for his child custody case. That is both the star and his character, as Van Damme plays himself in JCVD. The divergence comes when, unable to find work in Hollywood, he returns home to Belgium and robs a bank. The hostage situation that ensues is unlike any other for the star power of its perpetrator.

At least, that's what I took the plot to be when I saw the film advertised a year or two ago. But anyone who watches the first 20 minutes, or who reads the back of the DVD case, will find that Van Damme is not a crook but simply someone who stumbles into a bank heist already in progress. The true villains then brainstorm to make their celebrity hostage into the mastermind behind the crime, lending their demands more authority.

Although this is an unexpected twist, it is also a disappointing one. Rather than look at how someone copes with the loss of fame, talent, and family, JCVD instead becomes a ponderous standoff without any of the substance of Dog Day Afternoon. The entire film hinges on its titular hero, but when Van-Damme is shifted from desperate actor to hapless hostage, JCVD's strength is put in a corner, without more interesting characters or events to take its place.

The film captivated even less of my attention by constantly shifting perspectives. Some scenes are told in flashback, even to the point of re-watching familiar scenes but from different viewpoints. Anything shot in "the present" has a nauseating, greenish tint. I thought the red or blue component video cable had come loose of my television, but no amount of jiggling could correct it. Finally, I looked up the official trailer and found the same issue — or "feature", rather. It made the movie feel like a security camera tape instead of a professional production. But if you're a slow reader like me, you'll probably spend more time reading the French subtitles than you will looking at the imagery.

I confess that I watched only the first 40 minutes of this film and fast-forwarded the rest, so this cannot be considered a properly informed review. Nonetheless, I'm discouraged at the issues this film could've tackled and chose not to. Any star who depends on his body's ability to execute demanding moves must eventually face the deterioration of age. In Jackie Chan's autobiography, he describes his decision to use CGI to complement his natural agility. Van Damme has apparently chosen to try non-action roles, but he is too connected to the genre that made him famous. Without those moves, JCVD falls flat.

Having heard this post's titular cry in everything from Saturday Night Fever to Daredevil, I wondered what it referenced. My research led me to the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon.

This classic Al Pacino film opens on a warm day in 1972 with two characters holding up a Brooklyn bank. I was immediately fascinated with the alacrity with which this main plot emerges. There is no build-up, no introduction to the characters, no review of their heist plans or motivations: just two guys, two guns, and a bank full of tellers. The film gives its audience action to focus on at the same time it plants, in the movie and in the viewers' heads, the threads of character development, which then play out as the robbery devolves into a hostage situation.

Though Pacino and his partner, John Cazale — whose only other notable role was as Fredo Corleone in the first two Godfather movies — are the film's stars, the supporting characters provide the film's fascinating context. The six female tellers and their manager quickly display the symptoms of Stockholm syndrome, justified by Pacino's conscience as he expresses concern for their welfare (ensuring they have food, water, bathroom breaks, and medication), creating an interesting interplay between what should be two opposing factions. Instead, the scene inside the bank is akin to a power outage: a group of blameless friends hanging out, waiting for the situation to end and life to return to normal.

Outside characters also play important roles. The police know that if anything happens to Pacino's character, his partner in the bank will kill the hostages, providing a a safety net that allows Pacino's character to regularly step outside the bank to meet with police and other parties. Detective Sergeant Moretti, who I originally mistook for local bad boy Brian Dennehy, was in fact played by Charles Durning, who would later go on to such roles as the love interest in the Dustin Hoffman comedy Tootsie.

All these dynamics are further underscored by the film being true to life. I don't mean the "based on a true story" marketing gimmick used in films like Defending Your Life; all the characters and events in Dog Day Afternoon actually happened in 1972 Brooklyn. Hostage survivors were quoted as saying "I've had more laughs tonight than I've had in weeks" and "[I]f they had been my houseguests on a Saturday night, it would have been hilarious." From behind bars, the criminal on whom Pacino's character was based wrote a letter to the New York Times, praising the film but outlining its points of departure from historical record.

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