Until Death
By Cory Peynado, Blockbuster.co.uk

"If you're going to take a shot at a cop, make sure you kill him."

Very rarely is ‘cool’ a matter of opinion, your either seriously cool and everyone knows it or you just don’t make the grade. I say this because this infamous and instantly recognisable character seems to have entered that very arena. After an extensive research period of around eight or nine minutes I discovered that despite some of the un-cool press and media perception, a major amount of people still think this man is extremely cool.

After spending some time in the shadows, the Muscles from Brussels is still good enough to churn out a good movie when he wants to for his loyal fans. Though this time the role is not all about snapping necks or hanging on to the bottom of a helicopter… this time his demeanour is a bit more diverse and complicated, something that I think he is striving for in his career.

The story quickly introduces us to our main man Anthony Stowe, Jean-Claude Van Damme, who is a tough guy cop with a seriously bad attitude and a real loathing of authority. Aside from his own pretty serious drug habits he also has a criminal ex-partner (Stephen Rea) who he is trying to bring down for good but because of his disgruntle methods and edgy temperament he is not very good at getting people to side with him.

He's also distanced himself from his wife, Valerie ( Selina Giles), who is now pregnant with another man's child. This merely contributes to Anthony’s life being pushed further and further into despair and this all reaches a head when he lands in a coma giving him plenty of time to think through his life. It's time to make things right, but he's got plenty of enemies to deal with first.

It was a pretty smart move on Van Damme’s part to not follow suit and not stick to being the good guy. His character in this movie is a bit more of an anti-hero, spending his time occasionally blurring the lines between savoir and hell-raiser and doing what ever he feels is necessary to succeed.

Seems like this man’s not done yet then, even though we always hear that he is. I pretty much take my hat off to any performer who can keep going and keep producing entertainment at a high level, and since he’s been at it since 1985 he must have a fairly good knowledge of his craft and it shows. Totally worth a watch and Van Damme fans will enjoy seeing their boy on the other side of justice as its one of the films strongest attributes.

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