Films of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book (35 page)

There also seemed to be no technique either. Although there were allusions to Van Damme’s karate
and kick-boxing
career in Europe, there was no real evidence of martial art understanding or skill on screen — just glares, splits, slow-motion kicks, and inexplicable victory. Those were all in abundance in his next film, the seminal
Double Impact
(1991), his first major-studio film. Although a man named Sheldon Lettich
directed it, Van Damme contributed the screenplay and was credited as fight choreographer in this two-headed Universal Pictures release. Two-headed because in it Van Damme played twins separated soon after birth who are then reunited years later in Hong Kong to avenge the death of their father. For reasons yet explained, Van Damme seems obsessed with playing twins.

Given his script credit, Van Damme was more than likely responsible for the totally gratuitous dream sequence in which he cavorts in the nude with beautiful co-star Alonna Shaw
, as well as the scene where a bevy of leotarded beauties coo over his spandex-covered buttocks (while he does a split, naturally). Otherwise, it was business as usual, with Van Damme inexplicably losing his first fight with Bolo Yang Sze-yeung, but just as inexplicably winning the second. As unfocused as
Double Impact
was, it had nothing on Van Damme’s next movie, one which he reportedly concocted himself, which has been called
A.W.O.L., Wrong Bet
, and, finally,
Lionheart
(1991).

Sheldon Lettich
was still in the director’s chair for this tale of a foreign legion deserter who descends into the world of illegal street fighting. And it, like its predecessors, is full of loving close-ups, as well as repetitive fights that have no discernible dramatic structure. When the evil manageress bets against him in the final fight, Van Damme barks, “Wrong bet!” and trounces his opponent with, you guessed it, a slow-motion leaping front kick.

By the time of
Universal Soldier
(1992), he had become Universal Studio’s good soldier, willing to appear in all manner of predictable, ultimately unsatisfying action fare. Here he shares the screen with Dolph Lundgren
, whose
Rocky IV
role of the seemingly unbeatable Russian fighter Van Damme had borrowed for
No
Retreat, No
Surrender
.
Their teaming did nothing to improve the uninventive tale of two super-soldiers, one who goes berserk and one who becomes heroic. Guess who played who.

But all of this is mere prelude to the real reason Van Damme is in this book. Following his Universal soldiering, Van Damme wanted singular credibility, and he thought the best way to get it was to become a one-man Ellis Island for Hong Kong’s most kinetic and important action film directors.

“I know the new government won’t allow me freedom of speech nor freedom of creation,” said John Woo
before Hong Kong was returned to mainland China in 1997. “I can’t approve of totalitarianism, and I know people like myself will be crushed by the new regime.” So, instead, Woo allowed himself to be pressed into service by Jean-Claude Van Damme
, and Universal Pictures gave him a way out. But it came with a price. That price was
Hard Target
(1993), and the version which eventually made it to American screens could not honestly be called a John Woo
film.

Reportedly, Woo delivered an over-two-hour first edit of this modern variation on
The Most Dangerous Game
(1932), i.e., people hunting people for sport. He was supposedly told that “We don’t release Van Damme films that last over two hours.” Mere weeks later he delivered an edit that was only about ten minutes shorter. Despite enthusiastic responses from test audiences, Van Damme was said not to like it (not enough close-ups of him, apparently). So the rumors started flying that Jean-Claude locked John Woo
out of the editing suite to create a Van Damme-centric ninety-four minute version that had plenty of Jean-Claude close-ups, but much less of Lance Henriksen
’s charismatic turn as the villain.

Sadly, it was just the start of John Woo
’s Hollywood education. In ten years, Woo went from being declared the world’s most important and best action filmmaker to being dismissed as a has-been hack. The powerful blend of emotion, effort, passion, and compassion that drove the complex heroes in Woo’s Hong Kong films started to disappear in
Broken Arrow
(1996) and
Face/Off
(1997), became self-satirizing in
Mission
Impossible 2
(2000), then was beaten to death in
Windtalkers
(2002) and
Paycheck
(2003).

Woo learned what so many other Hong Kong filmmakers discovered: the American film industry doesn’t really like kung fu, no matter how much they glad hand or give it lip service. And Woo, like virtually all of the others who followed him, only returned to glory once he returned to China. He may have made some money in America, but he only makes great films in Asia. His latest,
Red Cliff
(2008) and
Reign of Assassins
(2010), has given him his best reviews and box office, since, well,
Hard Boiled
.

Hard Target
, meanwhile,
leveled out at about $30 million at the box office. The aptly named
Nowhere to Run
(1993) came next, after Van Damme made an ironic cameo appearance in Arnold Schwarzenegger
’s first major bomb,
The Last Action Hero
(1993). Then Jean-Claude led the crew who completely fumbled
Street Fighter
(1994). Despite the fact that they had the kinetic videogame as inspiration and a great crew of martial artists ready to help, the live action adaptation was a dull dud.

Timecop
(1994) was the last straw. Although the effort seemed to be promising, this tale of a time traveling policeman didn’t have a clue. Jean-Claude had gone back in time to save his murdered wife, seemingly setting the stage for a clever, rousing climax in which he could counter every villainous ploy, since he knew what was going to happen, but, instead, the finale was an illogical, uninvolving mess where, just as in every other disappointing Jean-Claude vehicle, things occur simply because they do.

Before the critical and box-office drubbing
Timecop
took, however, Van Damme was already hard at work on their next film, a
Die Hard
knockoff titled
Sudden Death
(1995) in which Jean-Claude plays a fire inspector whose daughter is taken hostage by a quipping extortionist who threatens to blow up the Stanley Cup playoffs, as well as the attending U.S. vice president. When that, too, disappeared in the ocean of cinema without causing a ripple, Van Damme thought there was only one way to make a good movie … direct it himself.

“Directing is my dearest wish,” he proclaimed. “When I am the director, I’d love to hire unknown actors and make them stars. I think it’s a wonderful thing to do, and I’m sure it’s possible with a good script.” Didn’t happen.
The Quest
(1996) made no new stars, and the script was a warmed-over 1930s version of
Bloodsport
.
Although the production proudly proclaimed the participation of fifteen of the world’s greatest martial arts champions, you couldn’t tell by the finished work. As usual, Van Damme merely swings his arms and legs the same way from the first fight to the last — the only difference being when his opponent falls down.

Something had to be done. Since John Woo
wouldn’t work with him again, back to the Hong Kong well Jean-Claude went. If he was the poor man’s Schwarzenegger, then he would get the poor man’s John Woo
. Ringo Lam
directed
Maximum Risk
(1996) and managed to invest what action scenes there were with some verve. Unfortunately, all too much of this middling thriller was taken up with boring intrigue as Van Damme fell back into his hoary
Double Impact
fixation of playing identical twin brothers.

By then Jean-Claude seemed to realize that all sorts of Hong Kong directors would love to get out of town on the eve of the 1997 Chinese takeover, so he next secured the participation of Tsui Hark
, perhaps hoping that the revolutionary director could do for his career what he did for Jet Li
’s. But Van Damme was no Jet.
Double Team
(1997) and then
Knock Off
(1998) not only failed to restore Van Damme’s reputation, but seemed to rob Tsui of all his filmmaking ability as well.

Even though Hark returned east a lot sooner than Woo, even his most exciting (2000’s
Time and Tide
) and beautiful (2001’s
Legend of Zu
) films were marred by an eroding story-telling sensibility, and his subsequent work ranged from awful (2002’s
Black Mask
: City of Masks
) to disappointing (2005’s
Seven Swords
, 2006’s
The Warrior
, and 2007’s
All About Women
). Only in 2010 did he begin to regain his filmmaking footing with the well-reviewed
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
.

As for Van Damme, having squandered the opportunities that could have come from working with the world’s best action film directors, he stumbled into the direct-to-DVD world of international co-productions. Although he’s made more than fifteen other flicks since then, the only one that drew any real attention was
JCVD
(2008), a Mabrouk El Mechri
film in which Van Damme plays himself during a post office robbery. Although promoted as a “mea culpa” film in which Jean-Claude supposedly addresses his shortcomings as an actor and person, it is actually a cunning defense of himself as a misunderstood victim… that, ultimately, fell on deaf ears and blind eyes.

In 1988, when Chuck Norris
slummed in
The Hero
and the Terror
and Van Damme excelled in
Bloodsport
, another story was taking shape in Hollywood. Rumors circulated that Michael Ovitz
, agent extraordinaire — then considered one of the most powerful people in the film business — was holding up Warner Brothers on the
Lethal Weapon
deal unless they gave his aikido
teacher a movie of his own. Whether or not this story is true, an entertaining movie called
Above the Law
premiered. It starred a thirty-six-year-old aikido teacher named Steven Seagal
.

Again, aikido
is a Japanese martial art, but one that is more water than ice. Seagal’s aikido also served to prepare American audiences for the kung fu to come because it took the roundhouse punches that had been U.S. fight choreographers’ stock-in-trade for more than fifty years and turned them back on themselves. It was the hand-to-hand equivalent of a wild-mouse roller coaster, spinning the antagonists in tight, fast, vicious circles. Unlike some other so-called American martial arts movie stars, it was instantly apparent to audiences that Seagal knew what he was doing.

According to his official studio bio, Seagal had been learning karate
and aikido
since he was seven years old. By the time he was thirty-one, he had opened an aikido dojo in Sherman Oaks, California, and whether he was teaching or, as others said, body-guarding Michael Ovitz
, by 1987 he was working with Andrew Davis
on a story that would become the script for his first starring role. That wasn’t all. Not only would he help write the story, he would also be the producer and martial arts choreographer. It was more than possible that the studio didn’t expect much from this collaboration. After all, what had the two done before?

Reportedly, Seagal had been the martial arts coordinator on the samurai sword picture
The Challenge
(1974), while Davis had merely managed to make Chuck Norris
look great in
Code of Silence
.
But other than that, what? Davis had been the director of photography on some minor independent exploitation movies like
Cool Breeze
(1972),
Hitman
(1972, not to be confused with the Jet Li
film of the same name), and the gangster thriller
Lepke
(1975). Since the Norris picture in 1985, he’d no major credits to speak of in three long years. The odds were that
Above the Law
would make some lean, mean money and disappear.