Until
Death
Picture: B- Sound:
B- Extras: D Film: C
Jean-Claude Van Damme continues to try hard and ends up giving his
best performance yet in his latest direct-to-DVD actioner, Until Death. The film itself starts
out surprisingly strong with Van Damme playing a seedy, heroin-addicted New
Orleans narcotics detective with marital
problems determined to nab the city's most powerful drug lord
(Stephen Rea), who, apparently, is his former partner -- the
movie never makes their history and adversarial relationship entirely
clear.
The first 42 minutes of Until
Death are edgy and quite interesting with Van
Damme playing a ruthless, amoral cop who's closer to Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant than the usual Van
Damme action hero. But after the 42 minute point, it turns
into the action movie equivalent of Regarding
Henry and becomes a lot less interesting as Van Damme's
sleazy cop gets shot in the head and then turns into a really
nice guy.
The formulaic last hour of Until
Death really disappoints because those first 42
minutes show such promise and feature an action star taking an
intriguing risk by playing an unlikable character. It's as
if the filmmakers and the star wanted to make a different, darker
Van Damme movie, but got cold feet thinking Van Damme's core audience
could only accept so much of the mean Jean-Claude.
Until Death reminded me of when Chuck Norris tried
to do an edgier vehicle with The
Hitman (1991), playing a supposed antihero always dressed
in black. But like Van Damme in this film, Norris was only willing to
take the badass thing so far, making his character an undercover cop and only pretending to be bad in order to
catch some even worse guys. That gave Norris an out, just as
Van Damme's good deeds in the second half here conveniently atones for his
earlier bad behavior.
Until Death is the latest of several recent Van
Damme films to be photographed by the talented cinematographer Doug Milsome,
who's become stuck in B movies after once having worked for major filmmakers
such as Stanley Kubrick and Michael Cimino. Milsome's contribution
at least makes Until Death
a lot better looking than the typical straight-to-DVD fare.
Sony's DVD gives the film a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen
transfer with 5.1 Dolby Digital sound. Both picture and sound are
solid. The only extras included are trailers for several other Sony
direct-to-DVD actioners, including Van Damme's previous collaboration with Until Death director Simon Fellows,
Second in Command, as
well as Van Damme's last film, the pretty good The Hard
Corps.
- Chuck O'Leary
