Jean Claude Van Damme in DERAILED - 28th May 2011
Well digging around in the $4.99 bin at my local video emporium I came across a Van Damme triple disc including three of the most ridiculous films ever scraped off the floor of a Bulgarian edit suite, wiped off with a wet rag and distributed on highly low budget DVD.
Sidenote: This is why video shops win out over the internet, you get to physically dig, delve, browse and rummage and there's nothing quite like it, you normally find something and it's normally ludicrous. In a good way. So please, support your local video seller before our high streets become one long line of mobile phone shops interspersed with fried food outlets run by hunched, greasy, denizens of the night.
I decided that we should watch this obvious 'Die Hard on a train' slice of incomprehensible Belgian drivel first.
Cheap doesn't even begin to describe it (although to our joy the producers did spring for a totally unwarranted yet hilarious 'Derailed' rap song to play over the credits) but if I attempted to describe it I may get so confused I would disappear up my own dirty tuba never to return. However, we arm chair reviewers are a hardy bunch, so here goes nothing:
The first bit is an utterly confusing mess of car chases, terrible CGI explosions and a leather jacket wearing JCVD generally being blander and more vacant than a beige coloured, doorless porta-potty. Imagine some Latvian students filming the opening of a spoof James Bond film using a camera made out of cardboard and yak's spit and you are getting close. Somewhere along the line he winds up on a spectacularly fake train trying to get a female thief and some vials of a biological weapon, not unlike small pox, to the good guys before the bad guys get her first. Then his wife and kids show up, think he's cheating, go to the dining car and then, yes, you guessed it, in swoop the bad guys.
The rest of the film is ineptly and predictably played out with all the energy and excitement of soup night at an old age pensioner's rest home and to say that, by this point, an over the hill Van Damme was going through the motions would be something of an understatement. It looks like the only motions he went through while working on the film were probably in the bowel region.
To criticise the acting, the script or the production of straight-to-DVD fare like this seems redundant as we only really watched it to have a good chuckle and hopefully see some A Grade arse kickage. Sadly it wasn't that funny and there wasn't a whole heap of respectable or well rendered fight scenes to get into, in fact the best time we had throughout the whole film was dancing along to the 'Derailed' rap as the credits rolled.
Two things though do bare mentioning.
1. Potential script writers take note - if your story is going to devolve into 'he was a one man army on a train trying to get the bio weapon off the evil sharply dressed ones' then don't overly complicate it by, firstly not explaining anything at all in the first 15 mins of the film (we don't know who JCVD is, who he is working for, why he is Belgian, where and when does this all take place, what the hell is he doing and where he bought his leather jacket!??) and the secondly filling the train full of characters with sub-plots and tangents that don't matter.
and
2. If you can't afford explosions, helicopters, a real train, passable CGI or sets then please don't make a film called Derailed that hinges on you being able to pull all those things off. The effects and especially the outdoor train action in this, I hasten to call it a movie are just annoyingly terrible, not even in an enjoyably shonky way, just in a 'why the hell did they bother' type deal.
Look, what was I expecting for $4.99 for 3 films?
I don't know? I personally would've been happy to watch JCVD wandering the streets of a nondescript European town asking the directions to the boulangerie and round house kicking anyone who tries to stop him. It didn't need to be a masterpiece, just something to pass the time and chuckle at and while there is much that is laughable in Derailed, the joke may end up being on you for watching it.
2 out of 10 limp and floppy baguettes
Points from The Wife - 2 out of 10.
Double Impact - 28th August 2010
Many of the greats in the action world, Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger for example, get to the point where fighting endless streams of large shoulder padded grey suited and faceless guys named Mr.X gets old and there is nowhere left to go but to fight themselves.
JCVD waited just 8 movies and then said, right, get me a script where I get to play a camp kick boxer and a cigar chomping reprobate with a penchant for hair gel and black clothes.
After a few minutes of this fairly standard flick I was feeling the impact alright, I was unfortunately feeling the impact of the ridiculous and horrendous sight of a highly camp Van Damme in blue lycra doing the splits. Never underestimate the midget Belgian's willingness to utterly embarrass himself for a paycheck.
For those who have not splashed about in the jolly pool of Double Impact I will quickly explain that the film centers around two twins separated at birth, when their parents are gunned down in Hong Kong by a suitably evil yet fairly nondescript triad gang. Really this was all a hand-rubbingly sinister ploy by token Brit villainous businessman to keep all the profits of some tunnel or other. Cut to 25 years later and despite one being in Hong Kong and one being in LA (due to reasons far too convoluted to go into here) both speak in a stilted Belgian accent. This has something to do with one of them being raised in France, (they don't say why) and the other being raised by French Nuns in China, which all makes just about as much sense as it needs to. Neither of them has particularly learnt how to dress without looking completely ridiculous but at least one of them grooms their hair different so we can sort of tell what's going on. Their parent's old bodyguard brings them together to take down the evil Brit and his Chinese henchmen. Cue a series of explosions, gun fights, silly slo-mo kick boxing bits, showdowns and, of course, the obligatory scene where, because of the most ramped up and elaborate jealousy ever witnessed in a movie, they have to fight each other.
Overall the movie is ok. The direction is fine and Hong Kong is always a vibrant and interesting location for films. The supporting cast, including the highly wrinkled, unusually shouty and fairly hopeless Geoffrey Lewis and a totally vacant, not particularly attractive, viking porn star, are mostly rubbish save for an eye-bulgingly psychotic turn from Bolo Yeung. In fact the villains are suitably chin strokingly evil and are all played pretty well including the usual band of menacing henchpersons complete with a scary looking, random lesbian with thighs like a bulls tanned rump that could make a man whince at ten paces. Van Damme isn't totally atrocious either and clearly has a ton of fun playing the gruffer and slightly more manly of the two brothers, Alex as he chomps purposefully on his ever-present cigar and acts his little Belgian muscular heart out.
As the film progresses, however, it's incredible how over the top it all becomes with every scene played out like a Norweigan melodrama. The aforementioned jealousy scene, that is only really in the thing as an excuse to include a Van Damme on Van Damme fight, is utterly tremendous and where the film reaches some sort of absurd pinnacle.
To set the scene briefly, Chad (the wetter of the two brothers yet with awesome kick boxing skills) dashes back to Hong Kong from their island hideout to pick up superfluous blonde lady because she's in trouble with the bad guys and in danger of being violently felt up by the ugly lesbian. Alex (Van Damme as the 'serious' brother) doesn't know where they are and is suddenly, outrageously tortured by pink and blue lit, completely over-the-top, soft-core porn images of Chad schtupping his leggy blonde bit of tail and, despite this never actually happening, resorts to bellowing loudly, chugging and gargling whiskey like it's apple juice and punching random walls until Chad and the breasty one get back and Alex decides to punch him instead. It all ends with Van Damme, as Chad, having a ludicrous strop and storming off to the beach claiming he's going to swim to the mainland. Hysterical.
All in all the action is pretty decent and well choreographed, although not one set piece stands out, except maybe the previously detailed, JCVD vs himself fight. The plot is easy enough to follow, the pacing holds up nicely and it all looks professional enough, even if the special split-screen effects do date it somewhat.
Still, perfect for a weekend afternoon when you have nothing much else to do but watch a Belgian go slowly mad.
6.5 out of 10 warm buttered croissants
Points from The Misses 8 out of 10 warm buttered croissants