"Assassination Games" - Not Enough Games...or Assassinations.

SPOILERS ahead.

For this month’s Van Damme movie, I decided to cover another direct to video release as I try to even this series out so I don’t end up writing about fifteen DTV movies in a row. I picked Assassination Games for a couple reasons. First off, I don’t remember much of anything about this movie, so I was genuinely interested in seeing what happened. Second, I recently covered Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, which also starred Van Damme and Scott Adkins. I came away flat out loving that film, so I hoped I would find more enjoyment from this Adkins/Van Damme team-up film. That didn’t turn out to be the case, mainly because the film didn’t capitalize on the team-up aspect nearly enough. Instead, it felt like a Van Damme movie was merged with a separate Adkins movie. It’s still pretty good, especially for a DTV film, but overall I found it underwhelming and ended up more interested in character quirks and the misleading title.

People Who Like Fancy Objects Must Always Slightly Adjust Them.

Van Damme is presented as a heartless loner who appreciates the finer things in life. This is clear from the set design of Van Damme’s secretly nice apartment, but the filmmakers, or perhaps Van Damme himself, insisted on adding an extra touch, literally, to show this. As Van Damme moves about his apartment throughout the film, he stops to admire different objects, like an antique crossbow or a violin, and then he slightly adjusts them on their respective stands before moving on. 

I get this character trait in other films. Someone on the fancy side enters a room to discover that some philistine has touched or moved some precious object, so they must make a show of moving it back to its correct location. It’s usually a piece of artwork or something. It’s a classic way of showing one character’s meticulous nature vs. a more careless character. But in Assassination Games, it makes no sense. Why does Van Damme need to adjust these objects when he’s the only one who has been in the apartment? (These moments happen before he takes in October, the abused prostitute.)

Once again, I get the reason for it, but it just doesn’t fit in this scenario. I focused on this so much because Van Damme’s character is very interesting in this film because of what they don’t tell us about him. Sure, he’s stupidly meticulous to the point that he will readjust things he himself has set down. But why? Why is he so alone? Why does he seem to hate humanity? He references having a hard life growing up, but plenty of people grow up in poverty in rough areas and don’t become rich assassins because of it.

The silliness of some of his actions (the pointless readjustments, getting mad about domestic abuse happening near him because it’s disturbing his violin practice, etc.) is telling because he wants to be fancy but doesn’t seem to exactly grasp how to go about it.

For instance, why does he live in an expensive apartment hidden in a shitty building? He claims to want privacy, but Polo finds his apartment very easily, so Van Damme isn’t being careful enough to keep it hidden. And if he wants to avoid interactions with the riffraff in the hallway, why doesn’t he just buy an apartment in a nice building that has more security? 

It’s because he doesn’t know how to be sophisticated. It’s all pretend. Unfortunately for October, Van Damme realizes this much too late. His interaction with her makes him question his loner lifestyle. And he ultimately realizes that connections with other people and having feelings in general are what make life matter. He is so stuck in his ways, though, that he still sets Adkins up, and he refuses to deal with Polo, leading to October’s death.

Betraying Adkins is bad enough, but allowing October to die is pretty unforgivable. This is why I wish there was more to Van Damme’s backstory. Perhaps if I knew a little more about Van Damme’s early life then I would be more sympathetic to his slow turn into an actual human being. As it is, all I can do is wonder why he thinks he needs to slightly move his fancy objects, and why he recoils at October’s kiss as if he’s unaware of what kissing is. Who is this sad, fancy man? I guess we’ll never know.

There Are Not Nearly Enough Assassinations or Games to Justify the Title.

Assassination Games is the title of a fun action film. This is not a fun movie. There is rape, domestic violence, needless death, revenge plots, torture, etc. It’s a bleak fucking movie. There is certainly assassination in the movie (but not much), but there are absolutely no games in this film. 

As far as the assassinations go, this film is actually pretty light in that department too. Van Damme kills a guy at the beginning, but the rest of the film is about using an assassination to draw out a former assassin. 

I suppose the trickery used by the Interpol agents in the film could count as the titular “games,” but I think that’s a bit of a stretch. I just think that a movie with this title should not be as bleak. If the focus of the film was Van Damme and Adkins continuously butting heads as they go after contracts, I could see that title. But they come across each other once and almost immediately decide to work together. Why not have the focus of the film be on their rivalry, or games? That would make the film immensely more enjoyable, and the title would make sense.

As the film is, I can’t think of a serious better title. But I do have some stupid ones:

Just Leave Professional Killers Alone

Nobody Fucks with Van Damme’s Pet Turtle

Nobody Kills Van Damme’s Prostitute Friend Who Is Teaching Him How to Be a Human

Why Do I Own This?

It's a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.

Random Thoughts

Starting off with a Neitzsche quote is definitely unique for a Van Damme film…

...but the movie taking place in Romania is pretty standard at this point in his career.

Loving Van Damme’s giant sideburns at the beginning, and how he kills a dude by throwing a meat cleaver directly into his forehead.

Did we really need the shot of the stray dog pissing in the street during the credits? I feel like the scene was suitably dreary before this moment.

“Hey hooker who was just savagely beaten in the hall, I’m trying to practice my violin because I am clearly a sophisticated person.”

I know Adkins’s wife is in a coma, but can they not close her eyes? For one thing, it’s creepy as shit. For another, her eyes must be horribly dry. And if her eyes are open, at least set up a TV or something near her bed.

I’m with October on this one, JCVD. Having sex for money is better than killing people for money.

But in Van Damme’s defense, she is very combative towards someone who saved her from a beating and is letting her crash at his place.

So some of the women Polo is choosing from are topless, others are not. I’m guessing these women answered a casting call, and when they found out their scene wasn’t with JCVD, they said no fucking way to nudity. Or they may have just no fucking way to nudity when they realized this movie wasn’t going to theaters. My point with all this is that it’s weird for some of them to be topless and others not. Once some of the women said they didn’t want to, they should have had them all have clothes on.

Wait. Is Van Damme a virgin in this? We need more info about his backstory.

..

"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.