The Last Mercenary - Jean-Claude Van Damme's Action Comedy Just for Fun

Last Friday there were 2 new movies released on Netflix, with one of those a Japanese film that I have not given a try as I was still considering whether to watch it despite not seeing the complete previous movies. While thinking, I just decided to watch this one, as it looked comedic in nature and I was in dire need of comedy. OK let's get to it.

Brief Story Line

Richard Brumère (Jean-Claude Van Damme - Bloodsport, Universal Soldier etc) was an experienced secret agent working for the French government. He had an illegitimate son named Archibad "Archie" (Samir Decazza) living in France under government protection. However, when an over eager bureaucrat Alexandre (Alban Ivanov) did something, the protection was lifted and Archie became the target of operation led by Commandant Jouard (Patrick Timsit).

With the help from Archie's neighbor Dalila (Assa Sylla), Richard and Archie went through the city of Paris while evading capture from the government as well as some person impersonating Archie who had his own agenda.

What would happen to them? Find them all in this action comedy movie.

End of Brief Story Line

To be honest, I have not been a major fan of Jean-Claude Van Damme, though I like some of his movies. He might not be as elegant, or amazing or well known as other 80s action stars who made it big then, but he did his jobs adequately. Regardless though, I have never been one looking for his movies, especially the ones released > year 2000. But this time, as I said above, I was in the mood for fun, so I tried it. And it's actually not bad. I found myself enjoying watching it with several comedic moments that happened due to combination of idiotic behavior, mistaken identity and inability of communication.

The main focus here was the interaction between Van Damme as this amazing secret agent who never had to speak to his estranged son at all, resulting to very awkward situation when they met. In addition to this, the character Alexander was just the type where you could laugh because of his silly expression. Plus there was a surprisingly shocking funny twist related to Commander Jouard. The rest of the cast like Éric Judor and Valérie Kaprisky did their job decently. Oh there was one appearance of a well known French actress named Miou-miou (she is multiple César Awards-France National film award winner) as one of Richard's old contact. 

In term of action, Van Damme still managed to show his agility and his trademark leg-split move. My goodness for a person his age, he could still move like that was just crazy. However his face just did not seem too natural and looked better when he was wearing hat and beard. He could still do some nice hand to hand combat. But like other similar action comedy, the actions were not the really top-notch type, as they were combined with some slapstick humor as well, which as I said just for pure fun. There were however good car chase scenes that were quite entertaining. The film also had few nice songs.

Overall this was a movie that sufficiently give me what I needed, some comedy here and there and few laughter. There was still enough drama and surprising twist at the end that I did not see coming. Oh there was a mid and post end credit scene, again, just for fun and not to overthink. So if you want to see this sort of action comedy movie from France (the European style was felt strongly in this movie, like when I watched those TAXI films), starring Van Damme at 61 years old fighting bad guys in a action comedic role and having some funny moments, then you could give it a try. Just do not expect this to be an amazing film.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars