We could all use a little more Van Dammage in our lives. Luckily, the movie gods know this and the Muscle from Brussels is forever willing to deliver more cinematic ass-kickery on an annual basis. Between an Amazon TV series (“Jean-Claude Van Johnson“) and a trio of new films, there’s plenty of Jean-Claude Van Damme to go around this year. First on deck? Kill ‘Em All…
A pretty basic short action trailer and a pretty standard plot. So what’s sets this apart from the usual DTV stuff flooding the markets? Some of the talent involved. Van Damme has been a bit pickier about his projects of late. That doesn’t mean this is automatically a winner, but it bodes well for it being entertaining and/or interesting. There’s also the matter of the players.
Having folks like Maria Conchita Alonso (The Running Man, Predator 2) and Peter Stormare (Fargo, Bad Boys 2) is always nice, but what sticks out more are the likes of Daniel Bernhardt and Peter Malota. The former is a stuntman/actor who has his own level of action notoriety, but is probably best known by most for his turns in The Matrix Reloaded and John Wick. More important is the fact that he’s a top-tier stuntman, makes for a great heavy, and will work well with Van Damme.
Kill ‘Em All is Peter Malota’s first film as a director, but far from his first action cinema rodeo. The man is a veteran stunt coordinator who has worked with JCVD a whopping 8 times previously. He was a stunt coordinator and/or fight choreographer on Double Impact, Universal Soldier, Nowhere to Run, The Quest, Universal Soldier: The Return, Inferno, Replicant, and The Order. Many of those rank among Van Damme’s best work for me. It’s nice to see him toplining the man’s directorial debut.
What this tells me is that no matter who good or bad the script is or how cheap of a budget it’s running on, Kill ‘Em All is going to have better action than it should. Doesn’t mean it will be appointment cinema, but it certainly has my attention. That, my action-loving friends, is why I’ll be making it a point to see this film when it arrives on June 6th.
