Pound of Flesh (2015)

I needed to get some more Van Damme on the site, and this one was available On Demand from my cable company. I think it was one I was looking to do before my unplanned hiatus, but that could have been another Van Damme project coming out at that time, you never know. Either way, let's see how it ended up. Also, our friends Brett and Ty at Comeuppance Reviews looked at this one, so you can see what they thought too.

Pound of Flesh has Van Damme as a guy in town in the Philippines who saves a nice lady from her abusive boyfriend (the late Darren Shahlavi), and for his trouble, she slips him a mickey, and while he's out a surgeon slips in and steals his kidney--it's urban legend meets JCVD! Problem is, that kidney was meant for his niece, and if they don't get it back, she's dead. So Van Damme teams up with his estranged brother and local crime lord friend, Aki Aleong, to track down his missing organ. As they dig deeper, they find not all is what it seems. Can they get to the bottom of things and find that kidney before it's too late?

This had the makings of a great Van Damme actioner, but it never quite got there. Why you ask? First and foremost, we have a 104-minute run time with what was maybe at most 80 minutes of material--but probably better a 40-minute short film or syndicated TV show episode length. To pad out that extra time, we have this added piece with Van Damme and his estranged brother, which I think weighed the movie down. A better approach would have been he's just pissed someone stole his kidney and he wants it back because he's a crazy assassin guy. Make it more hubris than anything, and make him a one-man force unleashed on all the baddies--they stole the wrong man's kidney! Action is better when it's short and sweet, and this film went in a different direction with too many plot twists and added elements that we didn't need. The film does have its moments, so it's not a total waste--and I may not have put it as much of a disappointment as Black Water, but it still dragged, and still felt like a missed opportunity.

Van Damme is closing in on the 30 movies territory, but with the great big screen career, I don't think pushing him to milestones like that is as important as it would be for someone like Cynthia Rothrock or Don "The Dragon" Wilson. Just the same, I don't want to ignore his DTV work, because I think covering films like these is necessary. He's very different from Seagal or even Dolph in current DTV films. Van Damme is really invested, and it seems like he's also choosing projects that pique his interest. I don't know if he's the reason this went beyond what it should have been, but it's possible. I feel like if Van Damme took the baddie he played in The Expendables 2, and did that as a good guy in an 80-minute high octane actioner, it could be really exciting. I don't know that he's ever really done that before, but it would be nice to see.

When I said the film had its moments, that shot above is one. If this were a big screen movie in the mid-90s, this would have been the money shot in all the commercials. Classic Van Damme right there, and nice to see that he's still pushing himself and wants to go there twenty years later. That's why I can't kill this movie entirely, despite the fact that it was draggy and a bit long, he's fully invested and doing his part to make this work. Whether he's doing it for us, or doing it for himself to prove he still has it, it doesn't matter, it was exciting to see. By the same token, bringing back the old Van Damme buttcheeks may have been a bit much for people--not the "pound of flesh" they were expecting! I get it, I understand, but for me, the buttcheeks were part and parcel with the splits, and I was willing to take it for the nostalgia factor.

At the DTVC we talk about the ways in which a film can be derailed, and the two biggest are run time and letting the plot get in the way, and this film committed both sins. And the thing is, to consider dumping the brother character, who plays a big part, seems like a drastic cut to make the film; but the reality is, making Van Damme a crazed assassin character whose quest to retrieve his kidney is more hubris than anything works if it's 80 minutes and has fights or shootouts every 15 minutes. They don't even have to be all Van Damme. We could have Shahlavi do one with someone else. Looking at the split above, plus the Bible Fu Van Damme did in a scene at a Philippine nightclub, the action was there to carry 80 minutes of a hubris-filled quest to get his kidney back. Sometimes that's all we need.

This was one of Darren Shahlavi's last films, and I think the saddest thing about that is, not only that he was only 43 when he passed, but that you could see here how he was turning the corner in his career. Someone who was so great in Bloodmoon and should've been getting bigger roles for years, finally was, and it looked like it was only going to get better from there. He had the skill and presence to be up there with Adkins and Michael Jai White, not to mention stars like Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais who are starting to be big from Asian markets; and there was going to be a lot of films made and a lot of roles for someone of Shahlavi's talents to showcase what he could do. Here's to you Mr. Shahlavi, you were one of the greats, and we will miss you.

On that somber note, let's wrap this up. While this had its moments, it's ultimately too long and gets too bogged down in its plot and many moving parts to fully work for me. Right now you can stream it through MoviePlex On Demand on cable, or if you have Stars, you can stream through that or their Amazon Prime service.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3488328