The Last Mercenary has Van Damme as a former agent for the French government who, on his last mission, requests that his son get immunity from any crimes and money from the government as payment for Van Damme's service to his country. Unfortunately, many years later, a drug kingpin who likens himself to Tony Montana in Scarface has gained access to Van Damme's son's immunity, and has been using it to commit crimes. Even that wouldn't have been an issue, until a government worker decides to revoke the immunity and the son is falsely accused of the kingpin's crimes. This means our man, Mr. Van Damme, needs to come out of retirement to clear his son's name. But will that estranged son who's never met his father welcome said father's help?
This was fun for me. It felt like a 90s Van Damme blockbuster in the tone and action. It is a French film, and while we have a dubbed option on Netflix, I opted for the French with English subtitles. The fact that you can go either way is nice, as you don't always have that option with streamers. The Van Damme we get is invested and having fun, and the characters around him were great too. There were moments where the humor was a bit much, like when the goofy government worker who initially revoked Van Damme's son's immunity needs to go back to his job, but can't tell anyone he's been working with Van Damme, so Van Damme punches him in the neck, which causes his face to swell up so he can't talk. I think for my sensibilities, I could've done with about 50% of those jokes, but the nostalgia factor of seeing Van Damme in something like this again mitigated that a lot for me, and I was able to overlook it. Rounding out the cast, I was a big fan of Assa Sylla as Dalila, Van Damme's son's friend. I also liked, among the many great performances, Samir Decazza as his son, Alban Ivanov as the worker who revokes the immunity, Eric Judor as the government worker helping the kingpin, and Miou-Miou as Marguerite, Van Damme's old friend. I think if the runtime, the French language, and the French humor are okay with you, you'll have fun seeing Van Damme in something reminiscent of his 90s heyday.
Van Damme is a big reason why this works, and I think to see someone at this stage in his career looking for projects he can sink his teeth into as opposed to cashing in on as many short roles as he can, is refreshing. He's also playing older characters, especially in this film and The Bouncer--which was also another film where he spoke in his native French. The fact that he's more selective means he probably won't get the tags to make the 40 Club or higher, but I think this might be a case where quality trumps quantity. This is movie number 33 for him, and we have, by my count, 4 more that we could review here, but we could potentially tack on a couple of his big screen roles like we did with The Expendables to get him over the finish line. In a way, we're already doing that by covering this film, because it's only technically DTV because it was released on Netflix here in the States. Plus, with all the different disguises he had in this, I couldn't not review this and miss the chance to post some of these screens!
Speaking of which, Netflix, and with it Hulu, Prime, and other streamers, have started releasing content that pushes the idea of what's DTV. Big names, big budgets, sometimes limited theatrical releases so they qualify for award season, this isn't the Italian shot in the Philippines exploding hut flick or PM vehicle flip every 10 minutes actioner DTV of the 80s and 90s. In a case like this, where we have a DTVC Hall of Famer like Van Damme, it's an obvious choice, but looking at movies like Prey or Pig, I want to cover them--and in the case of Pig, I've dedicated a podcast episode with Mitch from The Video Vacuum to it--but do they get away from the essence of what this site is all about? One idea I had was to fit those films in on some of my Tuesday off-podcast posts. In the past I did Friday Wild Card posts where I covered all kinds of films like Showgirls and Batman and Robin, so there has been some precedent for that. It is an amazing thing to see how DTV and streaming has grown since the site started 15 years ago. In 2007, Netflix was just barely rolling out their instant service, and I got a Roku, only to see the app freeze constantly. They upgraded it soon after, but the content was mostly DTV stuff and old TV shows, making it great for me and the site; but sometime after that, they released Arrested Development, and their original programming was born, which has totally changed everything. Now it's up to us to see how we're going to move with that change.
And to see how Van Damme has moved through that period as well has been interesting. In the late 2000s he was doing a lot of standard DTV clunkers with the occasional bright spot, then he does JCVD, and follows it up with his film-stealing performance as the baddie in Expendables 2. In the 2010s he went back to the DTV well, but it wasn't like those 2000s films, and now he's here in this Netflix original, recreating that 90s big budget glory in a French production. Maybe a good comp is Dolph, but Dolph never quite had the highs Van Damme did, and his come back in the late 2010s with films like Aquaman and Creed has a different feel--a "Dolph-aissance" as Mitch from the Video Vacuum termed it, a rebirth that has him getting big screen roles again. Van Damme on the other hand hasn't had a rebirth, so much as he's taking this later stage of his career on his terms. Whether it's big or not, they're the movies he wants to make. It's a shame that Black Water didn't turn out well with the two of them, but maybe it couldn't turn out well, because they're going on divergent paths that didn't need to cross--or rather the better crossing was Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning--but seeing them individually have these great performances in the late 2010s/early 2020s has been fun to see.
Finally, as you know if you've been following the site, I'm a huge baseball fan, and while I'm a Red Sox fan, meaning I'm contractually obligated to hate the Yankees, I loved seeing this '47 Brand Yankees cap on Van Damme in this scene. I can't tell for sure, but that looks like my favorite '47 style, the Clean Up. At one time I had an idea that I'd get one for every team whose ballpark I saw a game at (which sits at 10 as of this writing), but I realized it was kind of a waste of money, because the only hat I ever wear around here is my Phillies one, and then when I go back to New England, I wear a Portland Sea Dogs one. T-shirts are probably better, but even then, how many do I need to have from different teams? And some of those shirts are over $30, that's the price of ticket to another game! I'm also realizing that I'm such a baseball geek that I spent the better part of this paragraph talking about Van Damme's Yankees cap, when he's also sporting that too sweet mustache. Add in the shirt and glasses, and he'd be fantastic as a cameo in a Coen Brothers film playing a driving instructor, which is what he's doing in this scene. But I also still love the hat...
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Netflix. At an hour and 50 minutes, either in French or dubbed in English, it might feel like a bit much, and I get that, especially when you factor in the French style of humor; but the feel of this, bringing me back to the 90s Van Damme blockbuster, made it worth it for me.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12808182
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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