Six Bullets – 6 Bullets (2012)

Directed by: Ernie Barbarash | 111 minutes | action, crime, thriller | Actors: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Joe Flanigan, Anna-Louise Plowman, Charlotte Beaumont, Steve Nicolson, Uriel Emil Pollack, Louis Dempsey, Mark Lewis, Kristopher Van Varenberg, Bianca Bree, Andrei Runcanu, Florin Busuioc, Matei Calin, Celesta Hodge , Sorin Cristea, Damian Oancea

Jean-Claude Van Damme is back after the quasi-biographical ‘JCVD’ (2008) and ‘The Expendables 2’ (2012). At least if we look at the number of films he made in 2012, he has never been this busy before. ‘Six Bullets’ from 2012 is a grim action film in which the makers cleverly make use of Van Damme’s “expired” image since ‘JCVD’. Van Damme plays an elderly legionnaire who runs a butcher’s shop in Moldova and dabbles as a private detective or hit man.

The film opens with a bloody and explosive rescue of a fourteen-year-old boy kidnapped by muscular bastards for the sex trade. Van Damme saves the boy’s life, but this turns out to be at the expense of two girls who were also detained. In addition to the blood of the bad guys, the hero also has innocent blood on his hands. Wherever he looks the two dead girls keep appearing to him with accusing looks. The movie’s catchphrase could also have been “Van Damme sees dead people”, because the effect of the appearance of Van Damme’s troubled conscience is somewhat like the deaths that appear in ‘The Sixth Sense’ (1999). We encounter this eerie atmosphere in a different way later in the film when we see the mutilated body of an acid-soaked girl lying in a bathtub. The image comes back several times as a memory. We can call that a bit ‘Saw’-esque (2004) and whether all that misery is really necessary, we may well doubt. Anyway: the story is set in an ex-Soviet state, so extremely unscrupulous and gruesome gangsters are part of it.

Van Damme, on the other hand, walks around with a crestfallen and tired head throughout the film; for those who accuse Van Damme of plastic surgery, take a look at his eyelids, they hang tiredly halfway up his face. What is tight is Van Damme’s body that still looks fit and muscular. Van Damme can still last a few years if we compare that with the puffy Steven Seagal who invariably keeps all his clothes on, even during sex scenes. Then Van Damme is a convincing action hero who has acquired a little more depth through the extra years. The scenes in which Van Damme gets drunk amidst numerous carcasses on meat hooks in his butcher’s shop and finally falls over lame and still clings to a hunk of meat, is a beautiful image for someone who has lived all his life between death and destruction and now going down; read here Van Damme’s career as a bone-breaking muscle in countless revenge films…

Finally, the film leaves these stronger profile sketches behind and it’s time to fuck bastards again. As usual in this genre of straight-forward clapping tappers, there is little room left for subtlety, logical story construction and attentive acting. Fortunately, ‘Six Bullets’ manages to do quite well except for a few inconsistencies and improbabilities (such as a cell phone that turns off and on again and parents who are only taken aback after being told that their daughter is died in a gruesome manner).

For the genre, ‘Six Bullets’ is a fairly well-maintained film that is not only interesting for the diehard fan, but also for the regular viewer who can appreciate some simple punching and shooting from time to time. But the tension is less in the action itself, which unfortunately isn’t that spectacular, but more in the story and that is commendable for a change. Van Damme plays dry as always, unfortunately he is allowed to show less acrobatics than we are used to from him. It is mainly bombs and grenades that the clock strikes, while a beautifully filmed high kick wouldn’t have gone amiss. At least Jean Claude Van Damme says he hasn’t lost any of his agility yet. Let’s hope he gets the chance to make another film where everything is just right. Meanwhile, ‘Six Bullets’ is already well underway.