JEAN-CLAUDE VAN DAMME IN THE 2000s - A Decade of DTV action films - Part 3 of 4

The 2000s was not the best decade for Van Damme fans but a couple of movies were okay, and even one was amazing, such as JCVD. Let's explore them!

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“Replicant”:

It tells the story of Edward “The Torch” Garrotte played by Jean-Claude Van Damme. He’s a serial killer who often kills mothers and sets them on fire. Detective Riley, played by Michael Rooker is a Seattle police detective who has spent three years chasing Garrotte. Just days before his retirement Garotte strikes again, and even though he’s off the case, after being threatened, inspector Riley takes it on himself to stop the delusional murderer. In order to solve the case, Detective Riley works with a secret government agency that cloned Garotte’s DNA in the hopes of creating a clone that can lead them to the murderer. Detective Riley is in charge of training this clone who seems to have genetic memories and a telepathic link to the murderer. The story is pretty far-fetched but presents a nice effort from the director and the people involved in it to create an entertaining story. This is a much smaller budget than Van Damme’s 90s movies and it does show in the cinematography, nevertheless it’s an acceptable watch; just don’t expect any mind blowing fight scenes. Even the finale which has both Van Damme’s fighting each other is pretty lack luster and devoid of much interesting choreography.

“The Order”:

Following the disappearance of his father who is an archaeologist stationed in Jerusalem, Rudy travels to Israel in order to rescue him. There he meets Professor Walt Finley, played by Charleston Heston, who gives him the key to a safe-deposit box in east Jerusalem right before being gunned down by unknown assailants. Once Rudy opens the safe-deposit box he finds an ancient map showing a series of tunnels and a treasure beneath Jerusalem. There Rudy goes on a quest to find the treasure which but also his missing father. Many fun action sequences ensue within the streets of Jerusalem and some enjoyable fight scenes are also spread out throughout the movie.

“In Hell”:

Once again directed by Ringo Lam. This marks the 3rd and last collaboration that they had together. This movie tells the story of Kyle LeBlanc, who is an American working overseas in Russia. While on the phone with his wife their conversation is abruptly interrupted when an assailant attacks and murders his wife. The murderer pays off the judge and is let go for lack of evidence. Van Damme, enraged, grabs a gun from a security card in the court house and shoots him in cold blood in front of everybody. for this he is sentenced to life in prison. Once in jail he is literally put in hail by fighting with an inmate and being put in solitary. The prison is extremely corrupt and guards bet on fights between inmates. This leads to a very dark movie where Van Damme is punished on multiple occasions. One of the punishments is when his character, LeBlanc, is hung by his arms for all the inmates. The fact that he showed constant courage makes most of the inmates respect him. In the end LeBlanc manages to disguise himself as a prison guard and flees the prison.

“Until Death”:

This movie tells the story of Anthony Stowe, a corrupt police detective addicted to heroin that everybody hates. At the beginning of the movie, he is trying to bring down his former partner Gabriel Callahan, who has become a drug kingpin. Following a gunfight and serious gunshot wound inflicted by Callahan’s right hand man, he falls into a coma. After waking up he has to relearn to speak and walk. Because of all the pain inflicted by the coma Stowe decides to take a more positive path in life, stopping his drug addiction and trying to get back his job as a police office. Unfortunately, the police chief of his department refuses due to Stowe’s post-coma drug addiction. Soon after Callahan kidnaps Stowe’s ex-wife and Stowe is forced to confront him once again. This movie is such a mixture of different feelings for me. If you look at the 1st half, even though very dark has some pretty nice cinematography and could have led to being a really special movie, whereas the 2nd half of the film is like a complete flip of the coin and becomes what you would expect from a Straight to DVD release.

"The Shepherd:"

The movie tells the story of Jack Robideaux, a former New Orleans cop, played by Van Damme who is stationed in Columbus, New Mexico to take a job with the border patrol. Upon his arrival he is put against drug smugglers who are not only trafficking drugs through the Mexico US border but also illegal immigrants. Through the films investigation we find out that the smugglers are a rogue special forces unit led by Benjamin Meyers and his right-hand man Karp played by Scott Adkins. This leads to many altercations between Jack Robideaux and the smugglers which culminates in a fight between JCVD and Scott Adkins.

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