Bullet Points: The Bouncer
Once a one dimensional performer, Jean-Claude Van Damme finds himself in the midst of a career renaissance. Sure he’s still making action movies, but Van Damme has also shown the comedic side of his personality in recent years starring in the quirky action comedy series Jean Claude Van Johnson and a humorous TV ad for Tostitos.
Van Damme’s latest film The Bouncer gave Van Damme a new challenge to tackle… the dramatic role.
- The Premise: Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Lukas, a bouncer at a nightclub and a single dad that is struggling to raise his daughter. One night one of the patrons at the club starts harassing a woman on the dance floor, so Lukas escorts him outside… the guy tells Lukas he just made a huge mistake (apparently he is the son of a European Union official), the guy charges Lukas, Lukas sidesteps him and the guy ends up on the floor with his head busted open. The nightclub fires Lukas, which is not good news for a guy who was already struggling to pay for his daughter Sarah’s tuition. Lukas’ friend tells him about a bouncer job at a strip club.
- The Plot Thickens: Once Lukas gets the job at the strip club, he is approached by the police to feed them information about his new boss Jan Dekkers. Dekkers is a known counterfeiter/scumbag and the authorities have been looking to bring him to justice for quite some time. Lukas is not wild about the idea, but the cops promise to make his legal problems go away. And Lukas has plenty of legal problems, obviously the recent nightclub incident but it also comes out that Lukas tracked down and killed the carjackers that killed his wife when they were living in South Africa. With all that hanging over his head, Lukas has no choice but to work with the police and get in as deep as he can with Dekkers’ organization.
- The Action: The Bouncer is heavy on the drama, but it brings some action along with it. The stand out action scene in The Bouncer would have to be the car chase/shootout in the parking garage. The scene has great intensity and some innovative spots and just added to my belief that parking garages are some of the most unsafe locations on the planet… Another action sequence of note is the scene where Lukas has to enter a heavily guarded drug house and retrieve the guy cooking up the drugs for his boss. Lukas proves to be a one man army as he slips in, gets the guy and fights his way out.
Had you told me thirty years ago that Jean-Claude Van Damme would be receiving critical praise for his acting chops in addition to his karate chops, I would have never believed you. But the JCVD of today is not the JCVD of 1989. Life experience (both good and bad) and acting experience (Van Damme has been doing this acting thing for more than three decades) has changed the “Muscles from Brussels” from action star to actor.
The praise Van Damme is receiving is justified… The Bouncer gives JCVD an opportunity to display his range as an actor, from the tender father/daughter interactions, to the internal conflict he has working with the police and putting himself in harm’s way, to turning up the intensity for the action scenes.
There’s more bounce to the ounce where this review is concerned, check out these Bonus Bullet Points…
- AKA: The Bouncer was originally titled Lukas and was released under that name in France. Side note… the Lukas poster is far superior to The Bouncer poster.
- Extreme Job Interview: When Lukas arrives for his job interview at the strip club, he is escorted to the basement where a bunch of other bouncer hopefuls are waiting. The job applicants are then told to begin fighting and the last man standing will get the job.
- From the Book of Bad Ideas: I could not help but think it was a bad idea for Lukas to have his daughter in the backseat of his car while running errands for Dekkers. My hunch was right as Dekkers ends up using Sarah as a pawn as he tests his newest employee’s loyalty.
- Happy Ending?: I rarely question if an action movie is going to have a happy ending, but the darkness in The Bouncer had me filled with doubts. Were those doubts justified? Check out The Bouncer to find out.
