Enemies Closer - Van Damme the Villain

Enemies Closer is one of those Van Damme movies that I bought and watched and completely forgot for some reason. I have a bad habit of watching movies while distracted, and that must’ve been the case here, because this is a good’un, and it features my favorite type of Van Damme character: the villain.

Van Damme, the Born Villain

Enemies Closer is actually about a park ranger/former Navy SEAL (Tom Everett Scott) encountering a man (Orlando Jones) seeking vengeance for the death of his brother under Scott’s command. While fighting, a group of drug runners led by Van Damme show up to reclaim a lost shipment, forcing the two men to form an alliance to survive, hence the title.

But the main characters are boring, and drug runners finding a lost shipment is pretty boring, too. Thankfully, Van Damme dances into this movie as a vegan, environmentalist fucking psycho.

Van Damme was clearly given free reign to do any goofy shit he wanted to do in this film, but his character is also written that way. He talks about being a vegan and worrying about his carbon footprint and shit, but it has nothing to do with the plot. It’s simply an added detail to make him more unique than the boring dudes he’s trying to kill/recruit during his mission.

The vegan/environmentalist stuff may sound a bit goofy, and the film is very aware of it. Van Damme’s character is very brutal (he kills a roomful of innocent border agents near the beginning), but it’s all kept fairly light. I dug this because it reminded me of the fun villains of the ‘90s. Back then, a psycho was just a psycho. He didn’t need to be a gritty genius with a meticulous plan. A villain back then was simply the bad guy because the movie needed a bad guy, so why not make him fun. This is the philosophy of Van Damme’s villain in Enemies Closer.

What’s most amusing about the environmentalist stuff is that Van Damme could use that as his excuse to kill some people, but he doesn’t. After he complains about the carbon footprint, why not have him kill a guy, then talk about how it’s balanced out now? It’s not like his motivations in general have to be environmental (running heroin isn’t necessarily bad for the environment, I suppose, but it’s certainly not actively improving it, either), but just have it be something he can reference after killing people. But no, he just loves the environment, and he kills people, and there’s no crossover.

Though his veganism and environmentalism do not add to the plot, it is explained by Van Damme late in the film. As a child, he had a favorite goose that he named Edith. But his family thought it was funny, so his grandmother fed him the goose. Upon learning this, he became a vegan...and a murderer because he killed his grandmother for it.

That’s a hell of an origin story. Add some more goofy shit, like dancing for no reason as he explains a plan or picking wild strawberries after killing two dudes, and you have a truly fun villain. It makes me wonder why Van Damme doesn’t take on more roles like this.

It’s possible that because Van Damme had to play a villain a few times early on (most notably in No Retreat, No Surrender) that once he got to be the hero he always wanted to be the hero. After his breakout success, the only time he would even play someone even borderline “bad” was in Double Impact, and that didn’t seem to count since he also played the clean cut twin of that character. It wasn’t until Replicant that he got to go all in as a villain again. But, once again, he also played an innocent clone of the character. 

The most high-profile non-innocent-clone-or-twin villainous role was that of Vilain (yes, his name is literally the word “villain,” but with one “L”) in The Expendables 2, and he is easily the best part of the movie. 

Part of Van Damme being a natural villain is that it is so against type. Sure, Van Damme has played morally compromised characters plenty of times, especially in the latter, DTV portion of his career. But those characters almost always end up being heroic in one way or another. Van Damme may enjoy being portrayed as the hero, but as an actor, it seems like he flat out loves being the bad guy. 

Being bad is freeing, and Van Damme embraces it and makes each performance interesting. In this film and The Expendables, he gets to ham it up and make it entertaining. In Replicant, it’s more about showing his darker side. In Day of Reckoning, it was a chance to truly branch out as an actor. 

Van Damme clearly sees these villainous roles as an opportunity to prove himself as something more than the “splits guy.” Hopefully, he takes some more bad guy roles in the future because he was born for it.

The Hyams-Van Damme Connection

Peter Hyams directed this film along with Sudden Death and Timecop. Peter’s son, John, has directed Dragon Eyes, Universal Soldier: Regeneration, and Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning. I need to revisit Dragon Eyes, but the rest of these films are definitely top-tier Van Damme movies. It seems as if the Hyamses have a special bond with Van Damme, but Enemies Closer is the last collaboration with the father or son, and it came out in 2013. 

Hopefully, Van Damme can get another project going with one of them. I would prefer it to be John, mainly because of the batshit crazy direction he took the Universal Soldier franchise in with Day of Reckoning, which ended up being like Nicolas Winding Refn movie with Van Damme channeling Colonel Kurtz. John also recently directed Alone, which was one of my favorite films last year.

Peter, on the other hand, hasn’t made a movie since Enemies Closer. He is older, and the film wasn’t a commercial success, so it’s possible that his filmmaking career is over. But that’s unfortunate because Van Damme needs directors like Peter Hyams, who can effortlessly craft a thriller and allow Van Damme to do something unique.

Even if Van Damme doesn’t work with Peter or John again, at least they’ve made some quality films together that run the gamut from traditional action/sci-fi films to fucked up fever dreams.

Van Damme Character Name Check

His name is Xander, and he speaks French throughout the film. That works for me. 

Why Do I Own This?

It’s a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.

Random Thoughts / Favorite Quotes

I know Van Damme is the bad guy, but Tom Everett Scott making that dude dump his beer at the beginning makes him worse, even if he does let him keep his flask.

“There’s no cell service up here. I’m afraid you’ll just have to look at the lake.” This dude needs to be round house kicked so fucking bad…

Jean-Claude Van Damme, Tom Everett Scott, and Orlando Jones? This is a season of Celebrity Big Brother waiting to happen.

They must’ve cast the first fake Mountie with the accent so strong he’s almost unintelligible just to make Van Damme’s accent seem positively eloquent by comparison.

“Hey, what the fuck, Frenchie?”

“I’m the guy with the gun!”

Van Damme, holding a hostage: “And I’m the guy with the guy.”

Van Damme kills a guy with a broken CD-ROM, and that’s the best reason yet to stop using physical media. Being killed by one of my DVDs is a major fear of mine.

“No cell. Radio’s busted. There’s a GPS signal coming from the water near King’s Island. That’s where they’re headed. They’re going to the dock!” Damn, that’s some fast expository thinking, especially coming from a guy who just walked into a room full of his dead co-workers.

It sucks that they just cut to the random drunk dildo dead in a dumpster (that’s the best natural alliteration I’ve written in a while); I would’ve loved to see Van Damme kill him with a CD.

With the cabin fight, it seems like the director told Scott and Jones, “Don’t stop until you’ve used every prop in the room.” And that’s how a fight ends with a clothes iron to the face.

I can’t decide who’s the more unlikely bad ass: the dude from Dead Man on Campus or the 7 Up guy.

Of all the weird pronunciations in his repertoire, “heroin” is Van Damme’s strangest.

The two inept ICE agents who were on a fucking grocery run when their entire unit was killed seem to have been introduced just so Van Damme could kill them later on with a fucking stick and immediately pick and eat a wild strawberry afterward. I like it.

“I hate guns. They are very bad for the environment.” Are they? I mean, I know they don’t help the environment, but is gun production and use actively bad for the environment. I suppose war in general is harmful...I’m overthinking this line, aren’t I?

I was not expecting a story about a goose named Edith in this movie.

“My patience is gaining weight.”

Van Damme’s son has his fucking leg straight-up impaled in this film. Later on, he’s able to walk without even a limp and get into a fight. Van Damme must’ve demanded that his son be left alive for nearly the entire movie, otherwise this character would’ve died in the trap, and another character would’ve fought Orlando Jones near the end.

I’m not up to date on heroin prices, but is one duffel bag of it worth all this trouble?

“Fucking gasoline! I knew it would ruin everything. Ha ha ha!” 

I’m okay with Van Damme dying at the end, because he’s killed by an explosion that he’s largely the cause of. Tom Everett Scott couldn’t handle Van Damme in a fight, so he had to resort to throwing a flare to ignite the gas leak that Van Damme caused. If the movie had ended with Tom Everett Scott beating Van Damme in a hand to hand fight, then it would be utter trash.

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"Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning" - The weirdest and best film in the series.

*This article contains SPOILERS.

I always wondered what one of the truly great, original directors would do with a Van Damme movie. Sure, he’s worked with some renowned action directors here and there, but what would Kubrick have done with a Van Damme movie? Of course that’s an impossibility, and it’s very unlikely that any director of Kubrick’s ilk (PTA, Scorsese, Aronofsky, etc.) will ever work with Van Damme. But that doesn’t mean a skilled imitation can’t happen; in fact, it already has. Writer-director John Hyams has made the closest thing we’ll likely ever get. His Day of Reckoning feels more like a unique director’s vision than any other Van Damme movie. The comparison that came to mind as I watched was Nicolas Winding Refn. The general look of the film, a mostly quiet protagonist, striking images of sex and ultraviolence, and the general mysteriousness of the film make it very much like Refn’s work. To be clear, I don’t think Hyams was copying Refn. I just thought of Refn as I watched it. Day of Reckoning is simply the product of Hyams being able to do whatever the fuck he wanted, and I am so glad he did.

Universal Soldier: Unleashed

The Universal Soldier series (the Van Damme entries) is truly strange. The first film is pure ‘90s action fun. The sequel attempted to recapture that feeling, but failed (at least commercially; I actually like it in a guilty pleasure kind of way). Then director John Hyams entered the picture and made Regeneration one of the most surprisingly awesome DTV movies of all time. That entry was much darker than the first two films, but Hyams was just getting started. Hyams wanted to do something special with the series, but he also did something very simple: take the idea of the UniSol program to its logical, violent, insane conclusion. Let me explain. 

I love the Universal Soldier series, but I always found it a bit lacking when it came to considering the ramifications of the program. For fuck’s sake, they are re-animating dead Vietnam soldiers as cyborg assassins! And it’s a fairly light-hearted series for the first two movies. This is some dark shit, and Day of Reckoning finally dives deep into the darkness. The UniSols of this film have survived too long, and they are all pretty much crazy. The scenes in the bunker are fairly disturbing. The UniSols just sit around, amped up and drunk, just wanting to kill something because they know nothing else. Andrew Scott and Luc Deveraux claim to be their liberators, but really they’re just masters of a different name. And when John takes over at the end, he’s still just using the UniSols to do his bidding. 

Only death can free these men, but they’ve already died, multiple times in many cases. The film ends with the revelation that John has created a clone to infiltrate the government agency that controls the program. Terrible things are going to happen because John, a government creation meant to stop the rogue UniSols, has chosen to believe the revenge narrative they created. It’s a vicious cycle that seemingly has no end, and that’s the point. Where else could this program go? I know this is covered to a degree in all these films, but this felt like the most realistic and fully formed exploration of the consequences of the program.

One of the main consequences of the program is violence. Of course, the entire series is violent, but only Day of Reckoning garnered an NC-17 because of it. This is because the use of guns is toned down...a bit. The gunplay is still there, and it’s gorier than ever. But the most brutal moments of the film don’t feature guns at all. One such moment involves a fight with baseball bats. In a generally great sequence, John realizes his abilities while fighting off a would-be UniSol assassin in a sporting goods store. After an awesome bat on bat fight, John gains the upper hand and eviscerates his attacker’s head with one swing. I don’t know what else to say except that it’s fucking awesome, and it’s the kind of thing I always wanted from this series. Because what’s the point of creating supersoldiers just to have them pull a trigger. Give those fuckers bats and machetes and let them go crazy.

And Day of Reckoning is truly crazy on many levels. The fact that many of the characters are either under mind control, can’t remember their past, or are flat out rage monsters creates an unnerving mood throughout. But the sound and visuals amp it up even further. The sequences in which Van Damme seems to be telepathically recruiting characters are particularly difficult to watch. The primary example of this is when the UniSol is recruited by Lundgren after the brothel massacre. The flashing lights and the chaotic score along with images of a bald Van Damme make it an extremely effective scene. It’s hardly something you would expect from this franchise.

And that’s precisely why it’s the best film in the series. Day of Reckoning is possibly the boldest sequel ever made. It’s a violent head trip, and it’s everything a Universal Soldier movie could and should be.

Universal Soldier: Apocalypse Now

While I found a lot of similarities to Refn’s work in Day of Reckoning, the most blatant homage is to Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Actually, Day of Reckoning is damn near a remake. The basic plot is a soldier (Scott Adkins) is sent by the government (in this case, though, he’s unaware of the government’s involvement until later) to take out a rogue superior (Van Damme) who has gone insane and started his own army. He eventually makes his way to Van Damme, even going down a river at one point. The ending is where it diverges a bit from Apocalypse Now, even though he still kills Van Damme with a machete much like how Brando dies in Apocalypse. The difference is that rather than simply leaving, he takes Van Damme’s place, albeit with a much smaller army (you know, because he killed almost all of them earlier). The fact that he kills many of them could be a reference to the note Brando leaves for Willard telling him to kill them all. Small differences aside, this is very clearly meant to be a tribute of sorts to Apocalypse Now. And this is a logical film to emulate as Van Damme and Lundgren's characters were originally soldiers in the Vietnam War, and Lundgren's character was kind of an amped-up Kurtz himself in the first film. 

Van Damme’s screen time and overall performance and appearance is further evidence of the connection. Van Damme is barely in this movie. He shows up in the beginning scene, but after that he is only seen in glimpses or very short scenes, which is how Kurtz is portrayed in Apocalypse, as he’s heard in an audio recording early on, then we just see pictures of him. Both Deveraux and Kurtz hang like specters over their films. They are mysterious, dangerous men that our protagonist must face. 

Van Damme’s screen time is almost identical to Brando’s, but so is his appearance. He has a shaved head, and he even paints his face later in the film (seemingly for no other reason than to further resemble Kurtz). Van Damme also matches Brando’s understated performance. He is mostly quiet, which makes for one of the most effective, and definitely eeriest roles of his career. This is not a knock against Van Damme, but I’ve always thought his presence was more powerful when he is more silent. This is why his darker, more villainous roles stand out because when he stands around stone-faced he looks creepy as hell. 

It’s easy to be disappointed by how little Van Damme is in this film, but when you understand the design of the story (and it’s homage to Apocalypse Now), it makes perfect sense. And it makes for a more potent performance from Van Damme. If he had been around every other scene just being brooding and evil, it would have become a bit tiresome by the end. Better to leave him the mystery that must be found rather than to pull the curtain back too soon. Screen time doesn’t matter when his presence can be felt throughout the film. It’s a unique and great performance from Van Damme in easily one of the most interesting films he’s ever been involved in. 

Why Do I Own This?

It’s a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. In fact, I bought it twice, technically. It was cheaper to by a Regeneration / Day of Reckoning combo DVD than buying Regeneration by itself. But then I found out that the DVD version of Day of Reckoning was not the uncut, NC-17 version. So I had to buy the blu ray. I’m glad I did, though, because the extra brutality in the uncut version is worth it.

Random Thoughts

That murder at the beginning is definitely the darkest thing Van Damme has ever filmed.

The craziest little whorehouse in the fucking world…

This movie needs a seizure warning. Seriously. The flashing lights and whatnot are difficult to watch.

What a terrifying cult: a group of genetically enhanced super soldiers sitting around whiskey drunk all the time just waiting for an excuse to start beating the shit out of each other.

I watched this right after John Wick 3 (I definitely need to watch something with less death now), and the sequence when Adkins kills all the UniSols is just as good as a sequence in the Wick series. Obviously Wick is the more premiere series, especially since there are multiple impressive sequences throughout those films while this film just has the one, but it's still very impressive for any action film, much less a DTV one.

Lundgren gets two badass deaths in back-to-back movies. That's rare because when most characters die in a movie, they stay dead.

UniSols using baseball bats and machetes makes for much better (and exponentially more gruesome) action.

"Universal Soldier: Regeneration" - The UniSol Movie We Deserve

*This article contains SPOILERS.

I’m still working on my year-end list, but I had to take a break to get a Van Damme movie in this month. Since I revisited Universal Soldier last month, and I covered the now-ignored sequel Universal Soldier: The Return for my first Why Do I Own This? article, I decided to go ahead and finish off the series in December and January. So this month, I’m writing about Universal Soldier: Regeneration, a movie I wrote about upon its initial release and was disappointed in. After rewatching it this week, I have no idea how this movie disappointed me back then. Sure, Van Damme is a bit docile for most of the film, but it makes sense for the story. I just don’t get why the action didn’t impress me back then, because this DTV movie looks a hell of a lot better than most theatrical action movies. Also, Regeneration takes some of the darkness hinted at in the much lighter previous two movies and runs with it. 

Universal Soldier: Blade Runner

In my article about the original film, I joked a bit about how the whole UniSol program is fucking horrific, despite the fun tone of the film. The filmmakers of Regeneration, director John Hyams (who I think is the dominant voice here as he went on to write and direct the even darker sequel, Day of Reckoning) and Victor Ostrovsky (this is his sole IMDb credit, and the only extra info about him is some bizarre quote about someone being labeled an anti-Semite), obviously thought there was much more to this series than fun action. 

Van Damme’s story arc is definitely much darker this time around. Originally, I was a bit disappointed by Van Damme’s lack of involvement in the first half of this film; it’s almost like his first scenes are some separate short film about recovering from grief or memory loss or something. This time around, I realized that the filmmakers were showing the hellish existence he’s going through because of the program. It’s never explained what has been going on with him, aside from a line about being brought back a couple years ago. So we have to assume that something happened since the previous films that led to him being put back in storage. And now he’s out again, but he has severe memory issues, which a therapist is trying to help him with. 

This is right in Van Damme’s wheelhouse as an actor. As he’s aged, his face has become perfect for conveying silent suffering. While this is a largely silent role, Van Damme is still able to turn in one of his most impressive, sad performances. He’s essentially a zombie, and he eventually just accepts it because what kind of life can he expect to have anyway? And the doctor’s statement that they will no longer have control over him after the last treatment is not hopeful, but terrifying. What will happen to him now that he’s more powerful than ever and has true freedom? (Stay tuned for next month’s article to find the disturbing answer!)

While Van Damme’s story was a slow burn, Dolph Lundgren is shot of a cannon in this film going full Roy Batty almost immediately. Universal Soldier compares easily to Blade Runner, but that comparison was not all that apt tonally until Regeneration, mainly because of Dolph Lundgren’s arc. Brought back as a clone, he is clearly independent and angry as soon as he wakes up. And after completing his first mission, he turns on his maker (who looks a little like Tyrell), killing him exactly the same way Batty kills Tyrell in a blatant homage to Blade Runner. 

Lundgren spends his short time in this film questioning his existence and being violently confused. He fights Van Damme because he doesn’t know what else to do but kill and fight anything he comes across. But when it’s clear that he’s about to die, he is not angry or scared, he just wants to tell Van Damme what he remembered. Van Damme kills him before he can say anything else. It’s a tragic situation for both men, only slightly lessened by the admittedly awesome and gruesome death.

Lundgren’s inclusion almost comes across as a gimmick (mainly because his screen time is so short), but his presence brings the most interesting aspect of the story to bear. I did not care at all about the outcome of the actual plot because it was almost stereotypically bland for a DTV action movie: a rebel army threatens to blow up Chernobyl, holding the Ukranian Prime Minister’s teenage children hostage unless they are granted independence. This is not a knock on the film because it is quite clear that none of this is all that important compared to the ramifications of a genetically altered UniSol and a cloned UniSol. This focus is confirmed as more important in the next film. In many ways the title Regeneration refers to the rebirth of the franchise as dark, interesting sci-fi instead of simple, yet fun, action. But if you’re going to have action anyway, it might as well be great, right?

Straightforward Action in a Straight-to-DVD Movie.

Regeneration hits all the right notes for me: it’s brutal, the action is easy to follow (no quick cuts that plague the genre), the blood and gunshot wounds are practical instead of CG, and multiple sequences are shot as one long take. There’s a bit of a renaissance for action at the moment (the John Wick series comes to mind), but back in 2009 (when Regeneration came out) it was rare to find good R-rated action. 

Once again, I have no idea why this film didn’t impress me more originally. I guess it was the presence of the MMA fighter. He makes for a decent silent villain, but I found his signature movie in this film, straddling someone and punching them in the head a dozen times in less than thirty seconds, to redundant to the point that it becomes laughable near the end of the film. But it’s narrow-minded to let that small qualm keep me from enjoying a truly impressive action experience. 

I don’t want to just rehash all the best sequences like I’m hosting “The Chris Farley Show” (“Remember when JCVD jammed that pipe into Lundgren’s forehead then shot through the pipe with a shotgun and obliterated Lundgren’s head? That was awesome.”). So I’ll just focus on Van Damme’s involvement, which also might explain my initial lukewarm response as well.

I prefer to see Van Damme roundhouse kick people constantly in his films. I don’t like to admit that he’s aged and a lot of martial arts moves are beyond him. This is why a lot of his DTV stuff is more soldier/gun-based. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that type of action, but most DTV directors are incapable of doing anything interesting with it. Director John Hyams (and his dad [and fellow director of JCVD movies] Peter Hyams serving as director of photography) is more than capable, providing multiple impressive sequences that don’t involve roundhouse kicks. The standout moment is Van Damme’s infiltration of the complex, which involves a truly impressive hallway sequence done in one take. Van Damme doesn’t roundhouse kick a soul, and yet it’s one of the greatest action scenes he’s ever filmed.

The main event of the movie, Van Damme vs. Lundgren, doesn’t disappoint, either (and yes, I know Van Damme still has to fight the MMA dude after this, but come on, this is the fight people watched the movie for). Once again, no round houses to be found, but it’s still an intensely physical fight that movies seamlessly from room to room as these two zombie/clone/cyborgs that-should-not-be do battle. 

Universal Soldier: Regeneration is a perfect example of how excellent action can be achieved while dealing with a limited budget and aging stars. It helps that the aging stars are aging quite well, but you get the point: Lundgren and Van Damme are not young at this point. It really proves that crappy action is the result of weak filmmakers, which is why they are making DTV movies, after all. But every now and then, a talented director either gets his start or is willing to slum it and make something special. And Regeneration is special, even if it took me a second viewing ten years later to realize it.

Why Do I Own This?

It’s a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.

Random Thoughts 

The beginning car chase is a bit of a Bourne ripoff, what the shaky cam and Eastern European-ness of it all.

But overall, it's a totally decent opening action sequence.

But what the fuck were those cops at the road block near the end thinking? They were standing in a row together in the open. Why not take cover behind the cop cars?

Holy shit! Shouldn't they do a little measuring before they cut off the arm for replacement, or do they not care if one arm is longer than the other?

When will people learn? Do NOT approach Luc Deveraux while he's in a restaurant. 

You can definitely tell the bad guy unisol is an MMA fighter; they incorporate it into nearly every action sequence.

Jesus. I take it this dude's signature move in the UFC was to get on top of an opponent and punch him in the head twenty times in one minute.

Van Damme gives a great death look that makes a soldier jump out a window. 

I guess there are worse last words than "fucking prick."

My god, what a great death scene for Lundgren.

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