6 Bullets

Hot off the heels of his great villainous turn in the Expendables 2, Jean Claude Van Damme delivers another straight to video action film 6 Bullets. Over the years some of his films seem to have gotten a bit better in both acting and quality. He still has a lot that get international theatrical release, but still end up on the video shelf here. Will 6 Bullets keep his streak alive after E2 has brought him back to theatrical prominence?

6 Bullets follows an ex-mercenary known for finding missing children is hired by a mixed martial arts fighter whose daughter has been kidnapped, but is still struggling with a failed assignment. For the most part this isn't one of his better films, but is a decent addition to his filmography. There is plenty of action that's pretty simple and only averagely executed, but mostly loses some of its effectiveness due to bad editing. Where this film lacks on some of the expected action, Van Damme delivers another character with a wide range of emotions. While still nowhere near the performance of JCVD, he really carries the film well giving the character more depth than his normal bad ass persona. The supporting cast including Stargate: Atlantis star Joe Flanigan and both Van Damme's son and daughter all do a decent job with what they are working with. The story is simple, but does add some clever twists here and there to give it a bit of an edge you may not expect. The foreign setting really helps this movie both visually and size to give it a bigger feel than it may have had being shot here in the US.

While this wasn't a great movie, it still delivers enough of a kick to entertain the hard core Van Damme fans out there. Over time Van Damme, much like the other action stars of E2 has seemed to really embrace his age and seems to have enhanced his performances a bit more. Worse case, this film will serve as good filler while fans eagerly wait for his next film Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning.

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Unlike the pathetic Steven Seagal, JCVD's recently movies all turned out to be quite good, and this 6 Bullets is no exception. I have no problem to give this movie a 6/10 rating, could even give it a higher one, if these flaws were not so obviously serious:

1) Usually, a guy so well-experienced like JCVD played, the first thing when he infiltrated the enemy compound was to neutralize the CCTV system. But the guy simply overlooked it to accommodate the scenario. 2) The 14-year girl's finger was cut off, but she didn't seem to pay too much attention to her finger wound. Usually, when we carelessly cut our finger, even it's a tiny hairline cut, the wound would drive us crazy, the throbbing pain would be non-stop even the bleeding stopped. We'd keep raise our arm and keep our wounded hand or finger upward and high enough to reduce the throbbing pain. But this director and the young actress just overlooked this important detail, making the movie suddenly became quite fake. 3) There seemed to have no refrigeration in the butcher shop, front and back. If the weather temperature was not sub zero, then what the hack?

But none of the above-mentioned flaws would devalue this movie's watchable value. It's actually pretty good, as most of the reviewers said.

This is a Jean-Claude Van Damme action flick.

I've seen a number of his similar films over the years and feel that they have all been better than average. Meaning that if you like action movies, Van Damme delivers with ones that you will probably watch again sometime.

Like Assassination Games (2011), this one features his son and daughter (his daughter also produces). No, his kids won't win any acting awards either, but they turn in credible performances for their characters. For his part, Van Damme acts better than I have ever seen him act before as a troubled ex-mercenary who has built a reputation finding and returning kidnapped children. He also seems to have built one for leaving a lot of bodies behind, including innocents. Unlike most of his other movies where he does no wrong, this one has him a lot more fallible and even negligent. His realizations have him showing lingering regret that really spices up this plot.

While this film is vaguely similar to Taken (2009), there are more differences than similarities. It also shows what amoral lengths the family of a kidnapped child might be willing to go to to get their kid back.

This is a good action flick with some thought provoking moments about consequences and choices. I recommend it.

Jean-Claude Van Damme stars in another above-par DTV outing, and proves that he's still relevant (at least more relevant than Steven Seagal). There's nothing too special about the story, seeing as it's been done before in various forms (e.g., TAKEN). Even the cinematography isn't too unique, and has a washed-out palette that is all-too-common in these types of movies. But unlike TAKEN, this movie actually takes the time to develop its characters and give you reason to care about them. In other words, it's not all ass-kicking and one-liners (and in fact, there really isn't any humor). The run time is a little overlong (by about 15-20 minutes), but it's spent with characters you can identify with and a story that has some dramatic impact. Definitely for JCVD fans, but also for anyone looking to branch out beyond the middling action fare that Hollywood churns out nowadays.

This is without a doubt one of the better Van Damme movies in the entire course of his career. Why? Well because it is not the average generic movie that he usually makes, where he is sort of a lone underdog hero who is fighting an uphill battle against overwhelming odds, and with some miraculous force he manages to singlehandedly emerge victorious at the end, even after having received a beating that would normally drop dead a prize-winning bull.

"6 Bullets" is a great story-driven movie, in which Van Damme plays Samson Gaul, a mercenary who is working in Eastern Europe to infiltrate human trafficking rings and rescue underage boys and girls, and bring them home to be reunited with their families after these horrible ordeals. However, during one such a mission, something goes horribly awry and two innocent young girls end up dead. Haunted by the apparitions of these dead girls, Gaul ends up seeking solitude and salvation at the mercy of alcohol while trying to make a living as a butcher. A young American girl is kidnapped from her hotel and the parents seek out Gaul for help. But can Gaul redeem himself of the past and step up to the task at hand? The storyline in "6 Bullets" was really interesting and captivating, as human trafficking is, sadly, every day events in parts of the world. So with that in mind, then this story really takes on a personal approach and becomes more than just mindless martial arts entertainment.

Plus, the storyline is really helped along by some powerful performances, not only by Van Damme, who really stepped into character and showed a great acting side, but also by Joe Flanigan (playing Andrew Fayden).

The movie was nicely shot, the dialogue was good and it moved at a great pace. There was a fair amount of drama in the movie, spiced up with martial arts, of course, and also gun fights. This is really one of the better Van Damme movies that I have seen in a long, long time, and it is good to see that he is back in the game.

There were just a couple of things in the movie that I didn't really understand. In the opening sequence, how did Gaul manage to plant all that explosive in the cars parked outside the building when there was all that much security personnel around? And also when he wanted a phone number traced, it started with 555, which is a number associated with Hollywood movies, so we must assume that it is an alleged American fake-movie phone number, so why was it showing up on an Eastern Europe phone? And finally, why would most people in Eastern Europe opt to speak English first whenever addressing strangers? Wouldn't it make more sense to speak in their native language? Anyway, these touches are just small flaws that don't really have much impact on the movie. I just happened to notice this and wonder about it.

"6 Bullets" is a great addition to movie collection for fans of Van Damme. And it is also good entertainment, even if you are not particular a fan of him.