JCVD and RocknRolla: Comebacks I’ve Seen

I have seen two interesting movies in recent weeks, two projects that mark the comeback attempts of two men whose careers have seen better days.
The first movie was RocknRolla, Guy Ritchie’s return to his roots, the crime comedies Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Between Snatch and RocknRolla, Ritchie directed his wife Madonna in Swept Away, one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen (although I saw it at an anti-Valentine’s Day party where the partygoers suggested dialogue that made the screening fun). I have been advised to avoid Revolver, the next movie in his filmography, so I haven’t watched it.
RocknRolla has a lot of the touches that Ritchie brought to Lock, Stock and to Snatch, but it’s not quite of the same quality—the editing seemed muddled somehow. Where in the early movies, the characters and relationships were established by a rapid pace, a fun narrator, and some great performances , RocknRolla doesn’t seem to do the same. Sure, there’s rapid editing, narration, and some great performances, but it’s really not clear as to what One Two’s relationship is to rest of the London underworld portrayed in the movie. In the first two movies, it was quite clear as to who and where the characters were in their world, and Ritchie’s failure to achieve the same in RocknRolla took me out of the movie as I wondered who these people were.
Guy Ritchie’s comeback has started as his marriage to Madonna comes to an end in the glare of the media klieg lights, but he’s still not as sharp as he was ten years ago. RocknRolla is entertaining, and there are some amazing things in it (Toby Kebbell’s performance as rock star Johnny Quid is one of the best I’ve seen in any movie in 2008).
JCVD is the 2nd comeback movie I’ve seen this month, and it succeeds much better than Guy Ritchie’s movie. Jean-Claude Van Damme, the king of the action movie during the VHS years, makes a comeback with a great performance as a burned-out version of himself.
The movie itself is directed by French director Farouk El Mechri, and it is a stylish, fast-movign Rashomon –type story, showing Jean-Claude in a spot of trouble that is both hilarious and gripping. Van Damme’s performance is world-weary and touching, the martial art gymnastics ignored in favour of his acting chops, and he carries the movie over some pretension that could have torpedoed it with a lesser actor. A soliloquy, featuring Van Damme floating amongst the studio lights, could have been horrible, but Van Damme pulls it off and it becomes moving (no pun intended) as he looks back on his life and shows the price he’s paid.
I hope Van Damme and Ritchie both succeed in their comeback efforts—Van Damme was a revelation in JCVD, and Ritchie’s first two features are still favourites of mine.