It presents a human being, stripped of his celebrity’s arrogance and self-importance, revealing a broken man teeming with pathos and heartfelt regret. It’s a staggeringly good performance.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 3, 2024

This was boring, slow, and ultimately inconsequential.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 24, 2024

This was painfully boring and despite showing a different side of JCVD, there just wasn't enough meat on the bones of this story...

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 21, 2024

This film is far from perfect (there are some slow segments, the sepia cinematography could be more exciting), but it is still a new direction for Van Damme.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 2, 2019

It's tragic and funny and utterly captivating.

| Oct 18, 2018

Van Damme performs two virtuoso sequences in JCVD, each filmed in one extended uncut shot.

| Dec 30, 2017

By pitting JCVD the axiom against JCVD the person, JCVD deconstructs and deepens the understanding of both. It is nothing if not a triumph of humanism.

| Oct 9, 2017

JCVD is an action film where the flamboyant heroics occur only in fantasy. Van Damme's most daring stunt is a monologue dropped into the middle of the movie, a self-pitying apologia...

| Oct 6, 2017

It bequeaths to its eponymous hero a certain weary dignity, after putting him through the ringer.

| Aug 22, 2017

Think of it as Sunset Bloodsport with Jean-Claude as Norma Desmond.

| Jun 10, 2013

It's a watershed moment in Van Damme's career; the moment you realise the crazy bastard really can act. It's a tragedy of sorts that most of his fans won't even care.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 29, 2012

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 4, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 14, 2010

Turns out as bad as the star's recent string of dreadful films except for the fascination to look at it as one would a car crash.

| Original Score: C+ | Aug 11, 2010

It has ensured JCVD will be remembered as an introspective, thoughtful and altogether more profound individual than anyone who ever watched him split a skull would have thought possible.

| Aug 9, 2010

For all we know, it's just a big show, a put-on for our entertainment -- but what matters is that it's really quite convincing. You do want to believe this is Van Damme.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Aug 28, 2009

a bold attempt to humanize Van Damme, not by trying to ignore his personal and professional pitfalls, but by reminding us that behind ever movie star, loved or loathed, is a complex human being

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 11, 2009

...not your usual Van Damme movie...and a refreshing change of pace for the actor.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Apr 17, 2009

If you thought that Mickey Rourke had the market cornered on comebacks with his transcendent performance in Darren Aronofsky's masterpiece The Wrestler, then think again.

Full Review | Apr 10, 2009