Hot damn, Van Damme can act!

Van Damme performs two virtuoso sequences in JCVD, each filmed in one extended uncut shot. The first is a three-minute action scene that runs over the opening credits as he shoots, stabs, punches, kicks, jumps and hurls his way through a gauntlet of thugs armed with machine guns and flame-throwers—until the camera pulls back and we see him on set telling his cynical Asian director that one of the stunts misfired. “It’s very difficult for me to do everything in one shot,” he says, gasping with exhaustion. “I’m 47 years old.” The other sequence shows Van Damme launch into a tearful seven-minute soliloquy about his life that is both mesmerizing and heartbreaking.

As the camera finds a world of pain in his rugged features, he talks about his childhood as a scrawny kid who dreamt of being a Hollywood star. He talks about his many wives (four), about the celebrity privileges he feels he didn’t deserve, and the cocaine abuse that almost ruined his life. “When you’ve got it all,” he says, “when you’ve been around the world, and been in all the hotels, when you’re prima donna of the penthouse, you want something more. And because of a woman, because of love, I tried something. I got hooked. Van Damme—the beast, the tiger in the cage, the Bloodsport man—got hooked.”

His confession may appear mawkish on the page, but it’s truly moving, and even more powerful because it’s wired to a time bomb of a fictional plot. Although JCVD is no action movie, we keep waiting for it to turn into one—for Van Damme to stop playing Hamlet and save the world with his signature roundhouse kick. It’s a great tease. By the time it’s paid off, he has already aced the audition, by beating his own image into the ground, and showing he deserves that Hollywood shot.