File under curio: a number of people will watch this just for B-action-movie star Van Damme skirt an uncomfortably close line to how they might see his real life panning out, especially since J-C gets a weepy monologue in the middle to detail his actual life with its failings.He arrives in Brussels, in the middle of a custody suit for his daughter, and gets sucked into a bank heist where his celebrity status puts him centre-stage, as spokesman for the captors, and then has to start agonising as to whether he can actually do anything resembling all his other personae. None of this will mean much to the casual viewer who hasn't gone through all the set-piece kickboxing moves from Timecop et al. It's also a partial shock to realise that, worldwide, he's still Belgium's biggest star (forget Audrey Hepburn; she was appropriated by others too early on). It's as if Dolph Lundgren was Sweden's.
A neat enough idea is wasted: Van Damme is actually very good at playing the saddo version of his own life, but there's endless wind-and-rewind with a small plot idea that probably fancies itself as Rashomon crossed with Dog Day Afternoon. Not disgraceful, but too big for its post-modern boots.
5/10
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