There was a song that came out when I was 16 years old, that I loved but never got around to buying. I always thought the song was called "I've been downhearted baby" only the real song is called "Standing Outside a Phonebooth" and the song somehow defines my depressing teenhood and my even more depressing adulthood. However i'm not the only one who's been downhearted, as Jean-Claude Van Damme has been downhearted baby, ever since the day he got shot in the head and his wife was pregnant with another man's child. So in other words Jean-Claude Van Damme is downhearted in Until Death. (Maybe if Primative Radio Gods should try and write music for Van Damme's dramatic career!)

Anyway Van Damme really pulls the stops out for this movie, I mean he really plays a character who really is not unlike the Jean-Claude we all remember. Jean-Claude plays a junkie cop who basically beats up people and single mindedly dogs an enemy he hates. (He's been doing this in movies since I don't know since Cyborg...) This is how downhearted Van Damme is, so downhearted he is Van Damme that he actually gets captured like three times and gets the shit beaten out of him and then gets told off by a hooker for Van Dammering her ring of fire. (He fucks her in the ass in an admittedly hot little scene, although for the woman as Van Damme looks like a methed out version of his former self.) Anyway Until Death is like Hard To Kill, with Van Damme pretty much looking for redemption and finding a creative way to explain that accent of his. In that because his character has been shot in the head (Later in the film) or doped up beyond recognition (Early in the film) , for once Jean-Claude's slurred speech, dumber than a rock demeanor and tough guy approach is for once convincing. And in Until Death he pulls off the Ironside agenda, which of course is astonishing in itself, but what really raised the eyebrow is how much he pulled it off with ease.

Stephen Rea is a great actor, but not in this movie. His character comes off like a gay fashion designer who does all these evil deeds not because he's evil but because he wants to get caught and go to prison. In other words he's a horrible bad guy, badly underwritten and not at all a threat against Jean-Claude Van Damme. (Once you've taken down Dolph Lundgren, Lance Henriksen, Ron Silver, Powers Boothe, Bolo Yeung and yourself (Twice) there's nothing you can't do.) Rea is apparently an ex-cop who now is like a mobster and kills many people, and we know this because we get endless sequences of newspapers showing deaths of random unnamed people, and then the images of the victims tied up and getting executed. We see this far too many times and it does nothing but pad out time. (Sort of like how Cyborg has endless repetitive flashbacks that never add anything to the movie.)

The woman who plays Van Damme's wife is somehow the most unbelievable character. I couldn't help but feel sorry for Van Damme's character, you know one of the reasons why I admire Van Damme is that he has sex scenes with women are really hot. For instance Mia Sara (From Ferris Bueller), Rosanna Arquette, Natasha Henstridge and Ming Na Wen (Okay there was no sex scene in Street Fighter, but there should've been, that way the movie would've just been merely dreadful.) all hot love interests, however the woman here? No thanks, and her walking out on Van Damme and his depression? Come on where is the Jean-Claude Van Damme that would just laugh and say, go the fuck away i'll go get myself some Mia Sara then, i'm Jean-Claude Van Damme bitch! Instead he gets all sad and even tries to play romantic. Which Van Damme is totally convincing doing since he's playing a brain damaged ex-junkie who's trying to wax romantic, so I totally bought it. However what I couldn't buy was that even a brain damaged ex-junkie would jump through hoops to prove his worth to a woman who clearly isn't up to his Timecop standards.

He also has to save his wife in the climax, but where as I was convinced that it would well be worth saving Mia Sara or Rosanna Arquette, not so this time. I mean look at her, not only is she not that attractive, she wanted to leave you and had an affair with another man. The action sequences are consisted of shootouts which are only okay and sadly Van Damme doesn't fight like the way he did when I was a teenager.

Until Death however is a depature for Van Damme, no longer is this the greatest ass kicking belgian who does the splits but rather an actor trying to find the right role in which his talent credibly fills out. And as a doped up, brain damaged and viscous bastard. Van Damme has finally found the role he was born to play, well by that I mean a role that requires you to talk with a slurred accent, look doe-eyed and be mean. For once it's convincing and I anoint Van Damme with high marks on his performance (He did get the Ironside agenda) and give his movie a recommendation. It does posess all the entertainment value that all of his movies posess. And indeed while you can take the bad movie out of an actor, you can't take the actor out of a bad movie.

Now if Van Damme wants to win an oscar he needs to play a retarded man, and after witnessing his performance here, i'm fairly certain he has the chops to give Forrest Gump a run for the money.

P.S. Forrest Gump is the worst movie ever made.

Hamlin Grade: 7

Ryan
-Board certified professional safety dancer