JCVD

It’s like we’re making it up. Jean-Claude Van Damme, B-movie megastar gone straight-to-video, is back with a career-best performance in one of the coolest indie movies of the year. Meta-comedy-drama JCVD hurls ‘The Muscles From Brussels’ the most complex, fascinating role of his life: himself.

French filmmaker Mabrouk El Mechri rewrote the jokey original script to have Van Damme – stuck in bad movies, cash-strapped and reeling from a paternity battle – caught up in a Post Office robbery in his native Belgium. Using the camera like a mirror, Van Damme uncorks a completely unexpected performance: funny, poignant, knowing and fearless. Not least in JCVD’s most remarkable scene, an unbroken seven-minute confession delivered straight to camera, as Van Damme rakes over his life’s mistakes. Charlie Kaufman isn’t going to be worried. But JCVD still needs to be seen to be believed.

Jonathan Crocker