The Last Mercenary Review

July 30th 2021, 12:25pm

Last Updated on August 10, 2021

PLOT: A case of mistaken identity forces a legendary French mercenary (Jean-Claude Van Damme) to return home and meet the son he was forced to abandon long ago.

REVIEW: JCVD’s The Last Mercenary is most definitely not for everyone. It belongs to a very peculiar genre – the French action-comedy. If you’re thinking Taxi, you’re kind of on the right path, but this is probably even broader than that. It’s a throwback to a specific kind of genre vehicle made by guys like Jean-Paul Belmondo in the seventies or eighties, where the French humor is so overpowering that it’ll likely turn off a large chunk of North American viewers, although French audiences more accustomed to this kind of thing might be laughing their “têtes” off.

One thing’s for sure, it’s nice to see Jean-Claude Van Damme back in a big-budget movie, and at sixty, he can still fight as well as he ever did. The only difference between Van Damme in 1990 and 2021 is that he’s a much better actor now. The Last Mercenary wasn’t my cup of tea, mostly because I’m not a fan of this particular blend of humor, but JCVD is A+ in his first big role in a while. In a lot of ways, The Last Mercenary feels destined for the same fate as another French action-comedy, Wasabi (with Jean Reno). People will largely dismiss the movie, but there are a few pretty superb little action sequences that will probably wind up playing again and again on YouTube and in JCVD compilations.

The movie seems tailor-made for the star to some degree, with his character a nineties legend who went off the grid plying his trade around the world, a lot like JCVD himself in his large run of DTV flicks. He’s called back when his long-lost son, Archibald (Samir Decazza), is mistaken by the French government for an arms dealer who happens to be obsessed with Scarface and is introduced, leading the cops in a car chase while blasting, “Push it to the Limit.” The problem is, the arms dealer has got diplomatic immunity, and some french bureaucrats are involved in his weapon smuggling scheme, so innocent slacker Archibald ends up the fall guy. Luckily, his pops and some of his streetwise pals come along to save the day.

It’s not a bad premise. Still, the whole thing plays out more like one of the lesser Pink Panther movies than an actual Van Damme vehicle, and one wishes co-writer/director David Charhon had put more emphasis on the action rather than the comedy. Whatever the case, Van Damme seems pretty loose and affable, acting in his native French (he also dubbed the English version on Netflix himself). He’s having a ball, and there are two fights here that are peak Van Damage. One is a great bit where he takes on two hired killers with a bath towel, and another is a rollicking fight scene scored by Sylvester’s dance classic “Do You Wanna Funk.”

Moments like those make me wish I loved The Last Mercenary, but the fact is the humor didn’t work for me at all. Rather than laugh, I was rolling my eyes throughout. That said, I’ll admit this type of ultra-broad French humor has never really worked for me. Even when it comes to Belmondo movies, I prefer his more serious flicks rather than the comedies, but if this gives JCVD’s career a second wind in France, I’m all for it. With this, Van Damme proves he’s more than up to the challenge of a bigger production. Hopefully, his next one is just as ambitious, if perhaps a little less silly.