If you spring up up lovinggreat natural process moviesfrom the 1980s and 1990s , there ’s a good chance you ’ve seen a fair number of Jean - Claude Van Damme moving picture . While he never quite contend to become the sort of A - middle buster that Schwarzenegger and Stallone were , JCVD was a major star through the early 1990s and has continued to make compelling action movies even up until today .
As we count back at his long career , we ’ve identified seven of his very near movies that you should definitely condition out .
7. The Expendables 2 (2012)
JCVD joined theuniverse ofThe Expendablesfor this subsequence and helped make it every bit a suitable replacement to the first instalment . Here , he plays Jean Vilain ( get it ? ) , the leader of a rival chemical group of mercenaries who are task with taking on the Expendables .
The pic climaxes with a final confrontation between Stallone and JCVD , which seems like on the nose what devotee were hoping this series would be capable to deliver . When the moment lastly descend , both player seemed primed and ready .
6. Bloodsport (1988)
The movie that really kickstarted JCVD ’s career as an action icon , Bloodsportfollows a U.S. soldier who has do to Hong Kong to be accepted into a deeply dangerous soldierlike arts competitor . Even as he tries to win memory access to the fight , he also has to sidestep military officers who consider him to be AWOL .
Of naturally , what makesBloodsportso worthy of this listing is that it put up a full case of what JCVD had to offer . If the plotting is a little moth-eaten or repetitive , the athletic ability of its go man more than compensates for it .
5. Sudden Death (1995)
A aboveboard action picture show that feels a snatch like a riff onDie Hard , Sudden Deathcame at the tail remnant of JCVD ’s campaign as an action at law A - Joseph Lister . The movie evidence the story of a dad who settle to take his kids to the Stanley Cup Finals , completely incognizant that there are terrorist in the edifice who have kidnapped the vice president and are planning to blow the arena up if the ransom money is n’t paid .
Of course , they did n’t know that JCVD would be in the star sign . Although the assumption itself is n’t all that innovational , the movie around it mostly work , thanks in part to its willingness to lean almost exclusively into action .
4. Timecop (1994)
Director Peter Hyams had a fascinating Hollywood vocation , andTimecopwas one of its crowning achievement . star JCVD as a man who has been tasked with move around through time to prevent people from changing the future tense , Timecopis a true showcase for everything that JCVD did well as a movie hotshot .
Does it also showcase the limits of his worked up range ? Maybe a little second , butTimecopremains a electrifying military action vehicle yet , one that is drop anchor by its intriguing sci - fi premise .
3. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012)
The originalUniversal Soldierwas not well received when it was first receive in the 1990s , but the franchise has had a prospicient life on VOD , and many have flocked to it in part because of the incredible dynamic natural process filmmaking it check .
InDay of Reckoning , JCVDfaces off againstDolph Lundgren , but what really betray the movie is the unbelievable spectacle provide by manager John Hyams . Even in 2012 , JCVD was still more than capable of being one of the most exciting action stars on film , though , andDay of Reckoningis all the trial impression you want .
2. JCVD (2008)
The most venturesome and bright thing JCVD ever did was star inJCVD , a picture show about a washed - up military action star who finds himself at the center of a bank robbery . The brilliance of the movie is the elbow room that JCVD get by to lean into his persona while completely miss the emptiness that once defined his onscreen persona .
The motion picture is not quite the variety of quiet tally thatCreedwould be for Sylvester Stallone a few years afterwards , but it ’s on a alike wavelength , and it ’s a reminder that in addition to his skills as an action star , JCVD has a charisma that is hard to deny .
1. Hard Target (1993)
John Woo is one of the just directors of action mechanism who has ever lived , and his collaborationism with JCVD is among his best work . Telling the story of a bodyguard who discovers a closed chain of wealthy human beings who play with the homeless for sport . When he discovers that the father of the cleaning woman whom he ’s been hired to protect was killed as part of this game , he vow to get vengeance on her behalf .
The premise is certainly a picayune silly ( though it has some astonishingly political tinge ) , but Woo and JCVD make for a dynamic duo , andHard Targethelped to make both of their careers .
