How The Last Mercenary Compares To JCVD's Best Action Movies
The Muscles from Brussels is kicking again in Netflix's The Last Mercenary, but how does the action-comedy romp compare to the films of Jean-Claude Van Damme's spin-kicking heyday? Van Damme portrays French secret agent Richard Brumère, and while the general premise sounds like a 90's Van Damme vehicle, The Last Mercenary, in some ways, is more of a spoof of a Van Damme movie that just happens to feature the real deal as its leading man. That isn't a knock against it, as Van Damme shows that nobody can poke fun at his career peak better than he can.
The opening of the movie plays off of his reputation for his great flexibility, with Van Damme hiding from his pursuing enemies by bracing his feet against two ceiling pillars in a face-down position. Obviously, there's some camera magic at work here, but it sets the tone early on for The Last Mercenary as a comedic spin on Van Damme's 90's action films. That also makes it both similar to and radically different from them.
Van Damme first broke out in the late '80s with movies like Bloodsport, Kickboxer, and Cyborg, which were full of punishing but balletic martial arts fights, and set up Van Damme's image as a charming, down-to-earth hero. As Van Damme began to rise to the action movie A-list in the '90s, his films moved out of dojo and tournament settings into movies such as Universal Soldier, Hard Target, Timecop, and Sudden Death. Van Damme made a return to a Bloodsport-type setting with his 1996 directorial debut, The Quest, but the essential elements of what audiences expect in a Van Damme movie remained consistent before he began to venture into different territory in the 2000s.
The fight scenes of The Last Mercenary are surprisingly impactful for the movie's light-hearted tone, but they still feel different from a typical Van Damme movie. In a lot of ways, The Last Mercenary feels almost like Van Damme jumping into a more typical Jackie Chan movie, with lots of comic relief punctuating the action scenes. The Last Mercenary all-around is arguably more of a comedy with action rather than the other way around, which makes it quite a switch for Van Damme.
That's not to say Van Damme's best action films had no jokes, but The Last Mercenary is certainly much more relaxed than the action movies that made Van Damme famous. The Last Mercenary has fun as a comedic take on a 90's Van Damme movie, so it's a familiar and all-together different experience all at once.