Black Water

Say what you will about me, but I’m a sucker for Van Damme flicks.  There’s just something about the guy, what with his strong kicks and lingering charisma, that speaks to me.  Sure, he’s getting older, slowing down from his younger days, but that’s bound to happen, and it’s actually led to him showing his acting chops more, as in the fantastic JCVD.  (And it’s looking like Jackie Chan is following suit, what with The Foreigner and Namiya showing that there’s more to the action star than just stunning stuntwork.)  I haven’t been keeping up with some of his more recent work, partially because a lot of it just looks like the usual straight-to-video action schlock Seagal and Snipes have become known for, but when I came upon this one and saw it paired him with his Universal Soldier co-star (and fellow baddass) Dolph Lundgren, I felt I had to at least give it a shot.

This time out, JCVD plays a CIA operative (operating for some odd reason on American soil, apparently unfamiliar with the country’s intelligence laws) on the trail of some sensitive information.  While attempting to meet up with his Agency contact, things go sideways, leading to the death of his partner and his own incarceration.  When he comes to, though, he doesn’t find himself in some police station or anything, but rather in a secret black site located on a submarine.  Yup, this is happening.  Lundgren is a fellow prisoner, celled next door.  What follows is a twisty trek through the sub as Van Damme tries to convince his captors that he’s the good guy while also trying to escape his potentially deadly surroundings.

Some glaring issues present themselves almost immediately.  The camerawork is as flat as can be (and this thing was directed by its own cinematographer, no less), the pacing is stretched out beyond the limits of Reed Richards, and much of the acting is either wholly stilted or jarringly overcooked.  One of the major conspirators here is the seemingly villainous Patrick Kilpatrick, who’s barely awake enough to present us with anything close to a palatable performance.  Van Damme, usually the best part of his films, is sadly no exception here, appearing more tired and disinterested than anything.  During an interrogation scene, an opposing agent says “Agent Wheeler [Van Damme] has begun to show ambivalence toward his objective,” and that statement couldn’t be more right about the Muscles from Brussels here.  He’s given no help from the script (penned by plenty of straight-to-video schlock veterans, with past credits that include The Hit List and Jarhead 3), which wraps several action cliches together into a monkey’s fist of unnecessary and undercooked plot twists.  At quite a few spots, the action just kinda stops, making room for extended padding sequences, dull as vinyl spoons, that seem to go on forever.  The editor constantly leaves the flow hanging, and the cuts that are made are clumsy and off-putting, further interrupting the already stymied flow.

Possibly worst of all, those, like myself, who go into this looking for a blistering Lundgren/Van Damme team-up, are sorely disappointed, as Lundgren remains in his cell (we constantly cut back to him in there reacting to nothing in particular, always for no reason but to remind us that, yes, Dolph Lundgren’s still here, we haven’t forgotten) until about an hour into the proceedings (what’s worse is that there’s somehow still forty minutes to go), and by this point everyone’s stopped giving a damn about anything.

This thing is too twisty for its own good, the acting is atrocious, the script is inane, the physical presentation is lame at best, and I was left wondering how time had dilated so much while I watched it.  Unless you’re a massive JCVD or Lundgren fan, give this a pas, and if you do fall into that group, don’t bring in the highest of expectations.