Recap: Van Damme is losing his ground. He just lost a custody battle and he has trouble finding new roles. Even the bad ones seem to evade him. He returns to Belgium were he still is a hero, to find his footing and resurrect his career. But trouble seem to follow him. When he steps into a local post office he steps right into a robbery turned hostage situation, that the police isn't aware of yet. But when a shot goes off and a police officer sees Van Damme inside he draws the wrong conclusion that Van Damme is robbing the post office.
Comments: Actually started out somewhat promising. Van Damme has a good measure of self distance and humor (or possibly so desperate as the movie tries to show him, not likely) to do this. The director show some good hands juggling a broken timeline and being quite inventive by mixing a real life star into fiction and a classic hostage thriller. But after two thirds it derails completely. Suddenly we change the entire set up of the movie and enters a introspective state with Van Damme at the center. Everything stops to let Van Damme give a long, and unfortunately boring, monologue that just barely connects with the story. And after that we get to see multiple versions of the events, what really happens and what Van Damme dreams will happen. It just gets repetitive, predictable and as a result, boring.
The style which director El Mechri tries to implement in the second part is hard to accomplish, and he doesn't manage to do it. But such an abrupt change in style is almost worse. It's annoying when you have bought into a concept, that in itself isn't straightforward, that the effort for me as audience was for nothing. I almost felt cheated.
Van Damme acts well in what must be an unusual role. First off he must act as himself, or as the concept of his brand, and that must be hard. And second off it isn't much fighting, which usually is his strong parts. But he manages really well. Unfortunately he doesn't get any support at all from the others. Their acting is sub-par at best.
I have seen that director El Mechri has gained some attention for this. But from what I can see he has some talent and some good ideas, but in my opinion still has much to learn. He must learn when enough is enough and not mix too much into his movies. And he apparently gets credit for making Van Damme really act well, but isn't that credit due Van Damme instead when each and every other actor, also El Mechri's responsibility, acts really bad.
In conclusion I think it starts out really well, shows promise, but everything comes crashing down at the end, bringing the entire movie with it.
3/10
Comments: Actually started out somewhat promising. Van Damme has a good measure of self distance and humor (or possibly so desperate as the movie tries to show him, not likely) to do this. The director show some good hands juggling a broken timeline and being quite inventive by mixing a real life star into fiction and a classic hostage thriller. But after two thirds it derails completely. Suddenly we change the entire set up of the movie and enters a introspective state with Van Damme at the center. Everything stops to let Van Damme give a long, and unfortunately boring, monologue that just barely connects with the story. And after that we get to see multiple versions of the events, what really happens and what Van Damme dreams will happen. It just gets repetitive, predictable and as a result, boring.
The style which director El Mechri tries to implement in the second part is hard to accomplish, and he doesn't manage to do it. But such an abrupt change in style is almost worse. It's annoying when you have bought into a concept, that in itself isn't straightforward, that the effort for me as audience was for nothing. I almost felt cheated.
Van Damme acts well in what must be an unusual role. First off he must act as himself, or as the concept of his brand, and that must be hard. And second off it isn't much fighting, which usually is his strong parts. But he manages really well. Unfortunately he doesn't get any support at all from the others. Their acting is sub-par at best.
I have seen that director El Mechri has gained some attention for this. But from what I can see he has some talent and some good ideas, but in my opinion still has much to learn. He must learn when enough is enough and not mix too much into his movies. And he apparently gets credit for making Van Damme really act well, but isn't that credit due Van Damme instead when each and every other actor, also El Mechri's responsibility, acts really bad.
In conclusion I think it starts out really well, shows promise, but everything comes crashing down at the end, bringing the entire movie with it.
3/10