Simply Perfect

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

JC Van Damme single handedly created the action genre with his flashy ways. Not surprisingly, he gets older and others take over. On his way down, he cought us by surprise with his JCVD movie, in which he showed more emotion and acting skills than ever before.Maybe there was hope, but alas, in all movies since, his acting is gone, but also his willingness. He looks and feels unmotivated. All that could be forgiven, if only the action would make up for it. Since this movie has JCVD and Daniel Bernhardt, I was waiting for one final battle, with all the flashy kicks you could ask for.And than............nothing. Van Damme lost his will to act, but also the will to fight. To be fair, Van Damme did one nice spin kick. But that was so obviously a stunt double, that it was shameful. After movies such as this one and Black Water, for me the Van Damme era is over.

Some people wrote that one cannot expect "Hard Target"- like quality from an aged van Damme. Well, I agree that it's difficult to work with a small budget. A small budget film won't look like a Marvel production, period. Why don't the people involved focus on fight choreography instead? I don't get it. JCVD's age shouldn't matter. Fighting is where the film crew could score points but they don't. It seems like very few people in Hollywood actually get what a beautiful fight could look like. In the words of America's orange clown: SAD! Please watch some old Jackie Chan movies and make fighting visually entertaining again. Nobody cares about a story in a B-Movie. Not really, anyway. We, the old fans of JCVD, just wanna see him perform martial arts. That's it!

There was a time when you'd read that Jean-Claude Van Damme was in a movie and make a point of seeing it in the theater. But somewhere along the line his star fell and he began making movies that seemed destined for the land of straight to DVD. It was the same trajectory that happened to Steven Seagal which makes you wonder why the two haven't made a series of films together.If you look at his list of credits his last good movie was probably JCVD out in 2008. Prior to that one you have to go back to SUDDEN DEATH in 1995. Yes, he's made a number of pictures since then and even had the role of lead villain in THE EXPENDABLES 2, but he's never followed up on the potential displayed in his earlier films. It may be in part due to his reputation as an egomaniac or it may be bad management has placed him in poorly made movies. But the fact is this film will not elevate his status.Here he stars as a man with no memory who enters an ER in a hospital about to close its doors. With a limited staff on hand they do their best to patch up this severely wounded man and discover who he is. One nurse named Suzanne (Autumn Reeser) stays with him to help and eventually aids him when a group of killers arrive to take him out, finding out that his name is Phillip. Randomly killing anyone in the ER they track down Phillip and the nurse as he takes them on one at a time. Even wounded he can handle those sent to kill him.Most of this is told in flashback as Suzanne is questioned by two FBI agents, Agent Mark Holman (Peter Stormare) and Agent Linda Sanders (Maria Conchita Alonso). Several things about her questioning seemed odd to me and stemmed from a poor script being used. Both agents seem adversarial to Suzanne as they question her, especially Holman. As a victim in a mass shooting incident one would think they would be a little more sympathetic and less accusatory. The other odd thing, and maybe this is just my personal problem, is finding two agents in the FBI whose accents are as thick as seen here. Again, that could just be me.Very little is believable here and most of it doesn't play out well in any way you look at it. The pacing is up and down and never straight through. Van Damme does little acting and his martial arts techniques have been on display for years. The film tries to redeem itself with a SPOILER ALERT ending that is reminiscent of THE USUAL SUSPECTS. But even that can't save the entire project. For a movie to be good you have to give us something worth watching other than the last 5-10 minutes.Perhaps one day a studio will call up both Van Damme and Segal to do a joint venture, a film with a decent script that allows both of them to show they do have the ability to act and to offer on screen fighting skills that both shared with audiences at the zenith of their careers. This film has a problem just doing that with one of them. If I were Van Damme I'd set my ego aside and also hire new management. Until that happens he'll find himself in films like this one.

The film is a flashback from the memory of Suzanne (Autumn Reeser) an LA hospital nurse (filmed in Biloxi). She tells a story about how Philip (Jean-Claude Van Damme) saved her life and killed a bunch of people. We later discover he was after the Serbian Minister, a war criminal. The film includes his son Kris Van Damme as a bad guy Dusan who can kick his foot above his head as can bad girl Almira (bikini model Mila Kaladjurdjevic). The film is fairly straight forward until the last ten minutes where we get the twist which made the film worth a view for JCVD fans.Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.