Coming off of the worst movie experience of my life, I moved on to the next movie in my Netflix queue, JCVD, expecting it to be better than The Black Ninja, but still bad. The last Jean-Claude Van Damme movie I saw was Universal Soldier: The Return – more than a decade ago.

The last 15 years have not been so kind to Van Damme, movie-wise. He went from big action star to direct-to-DVD joke in that time, which explains why I hadn’t seen any of his recent movies. It has gotten so bad that I couldn’t even watch them when they came on the TBS. They were just so… bad. But, I decided to take a chance on JCVD.

What originally led me to JCVD was the premise. In the movie, Van Damme plays himself caught in a robbery for which he is wrongly accused. Sure, it might not be Oscar-worthy material, but I thought it might be interesting to see what twists and turns the move took.

I didn’t expect to see a classic (circa 1990s) Van Damme movie with kicking, punching, and cheesy dialogue. I expected something more of a confessional from Van Damme, and JCVD did not fail to deliver.

This movie is easily Van Damme’s most brilliant and pure performance to date. We don’t see a former soldier, a cop, a fireman, or some other kind of hero. No. In JCVD, we see a past-his-prime, struggling, broke, aged actor whose life is falling apart. The story, obviously, mirrors his own life struggles, and it serves as a way for Van Damme to exorcise his demons.

At the heart of the movie is a seven-minute soliloquy from Van Damme, in which we get to see the real Van Damme. I could easily call it his best dramatic performance, but I don’t think that would do it justice. It wasn’t acting. Van Damme peeled off all of the layers and exposed everyone to his inner most demons. No kicks. No punches. Just pure, raw emotion.

Most people don’t have the guts to put their true selves out there in front of people as Van Damme did. And, the fact that he put it on film for the world to see speaks volumes about who Jean Clause Van Damme really is.

This film showed that the action star we saw on the big screen in the 90s is just a fabrication. The Van Damme in this movie is so real that I should probably call him Van Varenberg – his birthname.

I would highly recommend this movie to Van Damme fans with a caveat: don’t expect kicking, punching, and cheesy dialogue. I would also recommend it to people who aren’t Van Damme fans. It’s very rare that you get a peek at raw and real emotion on film.