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We had hoped it would be a comeback, but the Van Damme movie on Netflix is ​​just awkward

"The Last Mercenary," which aired on Netflix over the weekend, is trying to get Van Dam back to the center of the stage.

But disappointingly, the film turns out to be a sloppy and embarrassing action comedy, and watching it is unbearable

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• Van Damme

• Netflix

Avner Shavit

Wednesday, 04 August 2021, 00:08

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Trailer for The Last Mercenary (Netflix)

(Photo: Star Rating)

Last year Jean-Claude Van Damme celebrated his sixtieth birthday, and did so while he was out of the spotlight. Like other action giants, from Bruce Willis to Stephen Siegel, the Belgian bodybuilder suffered from the decline of the action genre, which once dominated the box office but was completely suppressed by comic books. His last notable film was "JCVD" from 2008, generally one of the highlights of his career, and since then he has had to make do with playing the arch-villain in "The Unforgettable 2" and several dubbing works, and in recent years has been completely excluded from the radar.

Now, after a streak of very low-profile films, Van Damme is finally back to star in a film that has been given a chance for wide exposure. This is the "last mercenary", which was purchased for worldwide distribution by Netflix, and went up on the streaming service over the weekend.

As the name implies, Van Dam plays a mercenary, and the film replicates a trite plot pattern - the story of a retired fighting fox, who is required to retire due to an emergency.

In this case, the protagonist does so to save his estranged son, who hitherto knew of his existence, and on the way also to save the whole of France.

These, roughly, are the general plot lines, and the rule that it is evolving, so that "The Last Mercenary" also becomes more banal, absurd, sloppy and silly.

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Ridiculous wigs.

Van Dam in "The Last Mercenary" (Photo: Aloha Maya)

Perhaps because net action movies are a disappearing genre, "The Last Mercenary" strives as much as possible in the comic direction - not exactly the style that Van Damme is known for and specializes in. Here, he is forced to embrace every comic muscle that still has in his body. The humor in the film is vulgar, extreme and extroverted, and among other things requires the actor to put on some ridiculous wigs.

The film was directed by David Sharon, who had previously signed "On the Other Side of the Tracks", one of the first films starring Omar C. As in his previous works, here too he does not show extraordinary talent or skill, to say the least. Even in the best moments, and almost none of them, "The Last Mercenary" is reminiscent of the worst of the action comedies produced in Hollywood in the 1990s, such as "A Nanny with Muscles" starring Hulk Hogan.

Only one element here manages to arouse interest: representation.

The protagonist's son, it turns out, is a young man living in the suburbs, but the Parisian suburb does not meet the conventions we are used to in French cinema.

Here, this is not a poor and dangerous area, but an established and comfortable place.

Van Dam and the stars of "The Last Mercenary" (Photo: Aloha Maya)

In addition, the young man's mother is Muslim, and all his friends are immigrant boys or girls.

The only whites here are the mercenary and representatives of the authorities involved in the conspiracy at the center of the film.

As in "Lupine", the establishment here is almost all corrupt, perhaps as a reminder that the former French president, current justice minister and many other French politicians are now involved in corruption cases, which illustrate how rotten the establishment in the country is.

But even that does not make watching "The Last Mercenary" more bearable.

This is a very low level film.

The only reasons I bothered to write about it: because I already bothered to watch it, and that one does not waste paper.

Beyond that, the only public interest will be about Netflix: how is it that a body with such deep pockets, uses its resources to display such spoiled products?

Intolerable.

From "The Last Mercenary" (Photo: Aloha Maya)

And what about Van Damme?

Too bad of course that's what the world has to offer him right now.

But even more than that, it's unfortunate to see here, as one of the protagonist's colleagues, Mew Mew.

The veteran actress who has been nominated for a French Oscar no less than ten times and has previously starred in classics like "Vacation in May," but she too has been pushed off stage, and all she has left is to be humiliated in a film that does not deserve her ankles.

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