JCVD begins with a huge, explosive action sequence that wouldn’t look out of place in any other Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. However, as the ridiculously long scene ambles along, the audience discovers the take for the train wreck that it is: Van Damme’s punches and kicks miss wildly, explosives blow up out of turn, and stuntmen botch their cues by a step or two.

At the end of the shot, Van Damme marches to his Asian director’s spot and complains, “It is very difficult for me to do everything in one shot. You know, I’m 47 years old…” He speaks to his agent, who wants to put him in another low-budget, straight-to-DVD movie even as he states his desire to take a pay cut just so he could work on a legitimate studio project with decent resources.

But the troubles of Van Damme – or the version of himself that he plays in the movie – aren’t confined to his career. He’s in a legal battle with his wife over custody of their daughter, and the opposing lawyer lays out the evidence against Van Damme: a stack of DVDs of all of his movies. His own daughter fesses up at the stand, saying that she doesn’t want to stay with Van Damme because kids at school make fun of her because of her dad’s films.

Battered and broken, Muscles flies back to his hometown of Brussels, where local fans still see him as the local karate champion who conquered the world after Bloodsport. Along the way, he gets a call from his lawyers that he is broke, and receives new from his agent that he lost his movie offer in favor of rival Steven Seagal (who promised producers he would cut off his trademark ponytail). He gets hold of a friend willing to wire him a loan, so he takes a detour at a bank to check the transfer.

Of course, with his luck, the bank that he visits just happened to be one in the middle of a hold-up, and he finds himself a pawn in a hostage drama straight out of Van Damme’s B-movie work. The rest of the movie, unfortunately, concentrates heavily on the crisis. As an action thriller, it’s a flop. As a parody, it works. But barely.

French director Jean-Luc Godard famously said that to criticize a movie, one must make another movie. In this film, French filmmaker Mabrouk El Mechri not only critiques Van Damme’s body of work, but mines the whole Van Damme mythos to provide laughs, winces, and moments of pathos that become the engine for the whole movie. It is an ambitious effort, and for a few brilliant moments, it delivers on its promise.

To be fair, Van Damme’s previous work has not been completely devoid of ambition. He starred in the first Hollywood films by foreign directors such as John Woo (Hard Target) and Roland Emmerich (Universal Soldier), both of whom later thrived as blockbuster movie directors, and other acclaimed Asian directors such as Ringo Lam (Maximum Risk) and Tsui Hark (Double Team). But only in JCVD that Van Damme has been able to put everything together to such widespread critical acclaim.

Yes, it is Jean-Claude Van Damme’s acting that makes the whole movie work. At the heart of Van Damme’s performance was a six-minute monologue in the middle of the film that was so incredible, both because of how good it was, and because it was Jean-Claude freaking Van Damme speaking to the camera. It helps that he allowed himself to look old for this film: each scar, line, sag, and wrinkle on Van Damme’s face betray the exhaustion, the exasperation, and the bemusement with the pitfalls of being a worldwide B-movie superstar.

It’s a performance that perhaps no other action hero of recent vintage could equal; Stallone tried a similar tack with Rocky Balboa, revealing his own feelings about his film career through his iconic boxer character, to mixed results.

Last year, Mickey Rourke scored an Oscar nomination and universal acclaim for his turn as Randy “The Ram” Robinson in The Wrestler, with the washed-up grappler’s story serving as an allegory for Rourke’s own career. Van Damme delivers a performance in this film that was every bit as good as Rourke’s, and in all seriousness, an Oscar nomination for the erstwhile action hero would not have been out of place.

In my previous post about Van Damme’s movies, I admitted that I had always been a bigger fan of Seagal. Still, Van Damme has turned me into a believer with this movie, and I’m curious as to what Van Damme decides to do next. It’s almost a shame to see him star in another cheap action film after the depths he showed in this move.

On one hand, he has turned down a lead role in Sylvester Stallone’s ensemble action blockbuster The Expendables; on the other hand, he is due to star in a new Universal Soldier film. Hopefully, he ends up doing something worthy of JCVD.