As the hours tick away, the trio of bandits begin to sound less interested in letting any of their prisoners walk away with their lives. The streets start to fill up with devoted J.C.V.D. fans who have come to cheer their idol on (even if he really is robbing the post office) and the police grow weary, their trigger fingers becoming itchy. And then poor Jean-Claude’s parents show up, too — just to try and talk him out of the building. It’s time for the man who has been receiving the shit-end of the stick from the whole world for all these years to make a decision, which leads up to one of the most sincere and inspired monologues to ever emerge from an action star’s lips (everything he says is from the heart there, folks — top that, Seagal), and a climax that’s anything but Hollywood. No wonder JCVD is such a fun movie.
Peace Arch Home Entertainment bring JCVD to DVD and Blu-ray in the States following a fairly decent theatrical run. The movie has a very gloomy atmosphere to it (in order to relay real life as opposed to fiction, I suppose — that, or it’s just a French thing) so the video presentation doesn’t jump out at you with any vibrant colors or anything of the like. Let’s put it this way: don’t use this one as a template to adjust your color settings, a’ight?
The film is presented in an anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen ratio with an odd number of audio/subtitle combinations to select from: there’s the “Theatrical Version” with French Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and English subtitles, the “English Version” with English 5.1 and partial English subtitles, the “French Version” with both 5.1 and subs in Français, the “Spanish Subtitled Version” presents the Spanish subtitles with the French audio track, and an “English Subtitled For The Hearing Impaired Version” which has full English subs with the French track. Got that? Well, you better get it, because there’s no mix-and-matching here: you must select one option or another — and, while the audio options sound great, the funky way of selecting them (you have to go to the Set Up menu to change from the default French/English version should you need to) makes this the disc’s weakest function.
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Article comments
1 - David R Perry
Just watched this last night. Although I found the actual story part of the film to be a little lacking, I was genuinely impressed with Jean-Claude's role in the film. Both the honest portrayal of his life, as well as our culture's obsession with celebrity, felt very genuine and impactful. Not a great film, but certainly had some surprisingly good points to it.