For years now, people have been trying to get me to watch this film. I honestly have no idea why I’ve been so hesitant – it may have something to do with the fact that a cube killed my family and that I’m allergic to movies, but I’m probably reading into it too much. The point is that last night I finally gave in and quite frankly, I wish I’d folded sooner. Had I seen Cube thirteen years ago when it was released, I’m pretty sure it would have blown my mind and changed my life forever and honestly, there’s no telling where I’d be now. Senior Advisor to the President of Space, perhaps? A debonair Private Eye? A jackass with a Cube poster on his wall? The possibilities are endless.
Cube’s opening scene is so badass that my dog and I high-fived each other without even looking. Let me spoil it for you: A dude wakes up in a room with doors on each wall, the ceiling, and the floor. He silently goes to each door and opens it, revealing seemingly identical rooms on all sides. Obviously thinking “fuck it”, he walks through the last door he opened and into the center of the adjacent room. Suddenly there’s a quick, clean metallic noise – like a knife being unsheathed – and lines of blood form all over his face and body until he quietly peels apart into little squares of dude that drop to the ground like the weird, slimey ham cubes you put on salads at crappy buffets. It’s then that the camera changes focus, revealing a grid of bloody steel wires. The grid folds up, disappears, and boom – Title screen. At that moment, you are officially this movie’s bitch.
But Cube isn’t just one brutal death scene after another. That opening sequence just serves to show you what this place is capable of. The rest of the movie follows six other (slightly more cautious) unwilling participants as they wander about the Cube, looking for a way out whilst trying not to get dead in the process. No one remembers how they got there and each person seems to have been selected randomly, but as the “prisoners” get to talking (as prisoners do), they begin to discover that perhaps each other’s presence there isn’t so random after all. That’s when the paranoia and self-preservation kick in and the whole thing turns into “Survivor: Death Cube” (Dude I would watch the SHIT out of that for realsies).
While I can understand the paranoia and fear in a situation such as this, I have a hard time understanding the open hostility that everyone shows to one another. Now maybe I’ve just been lucky in that all my death cube experiences have been with the even-tempered and polite, or maybe these folks need to slow their goddamn rolls for a second or two. These constant strange over-reactions by a couple characters are the only moments that the film loses steam for me, and really, if that’s the worst thing you can say about a movie, it ain’t half bad – especially if it was made for only $365k…which it was. And that’s Canadian dollars, motherfucker. So that’s like six bucks U.S. which is super impressive.
So if you haven’t seen Cube, I’d strongly urge you to do so. Like, very strongly. No, seriously, do it. DUDE I WILL BITE YOUR COCKSUCKING FACE OFF. Sorry. It’s contagious.
I give Cube 4 out of 5 descents into madness and myself a gold star for resisting the urge to reference Portal throughout this review.
Oops.
“JCVD” is not the typical high action, low budget, straight-to-DVD, movie we’ve all come to expect from Jean-Claude Van Damme. In fact, with the exception of one of the greatest credit sequences in movie history, JCVD doesn’t deliver much in the karate department. But what the movie lacks in martial arts, it more than makes up for in cinematic arts. This isn’t an action flick, it’s a moving and intimate portrayal of an actor turned industry joke. During Van Damme’s 25 year career in Hollywood, he has been consistently typecast, labeled a one-trick pony and found himself at the center of drug and relationship scandals. Jean-Claude Van Damme could have easily rectified his problems with karate chops, but in JCVD he faces all of the criticisms without resorting to violence, and in the process displays more vulnerability and humanity than any other actor in Hollywood to date.
I know that this all seems like the perfect formula for action but as it turns out, it’s actually the perfect formula for exposing the human flaws within Jean-Claude Van Damme. Between the scenes inside and outside the bank, there are vignettes which reflect JCVD’s deteriorating situation. These scenes expose his failed marriage, the rocky relationship with his daughter, and his ailing movie career. Once all of these elements come together, why JCVD doesn’t simply clobber the bad guys is understandable; he’s no action hero, he’s just a has been and he knows it. So he doesn’t save the day with extreme prejudice, instead he does like all of the other hostages and obeys commands in order to walk out alive.
For the few of you who are unfamiliar with the “Universal Soldier” franchise (shame on you) let me bring you up to speed. So the story goes two badass soldiers die in Vietnam, and the US military (in their infinite wisdom) decides to use the dead bodies to create an army of unstoppable (though brain-dead) killing machines. Luc Deveraux (JCVD) and Andrew Scott (Dolph Lundgren) are the first two “UniSols” created to combat terrorist threats. The situation eventually evolves into good Unisol vs. bad UniSol when Deveraux begins to remember his past life, and Scott attempts to stomp Deveraux out of existence. Then Luc Deveraux returned for the 1999 flop, “Universal Soldier: The Return.” This was a terrible movie and most likely the reason you haven’t seen “Universal Soldier: Regeneration” yet. Well friends, when it comes to “Universal Soldier: Regeneration” let me tell you this: last night I dreamed that I punched a man to death. A man head-butted me, and I punched him in the face until he was dead. This was no coincidence. Universal Soldier: Regeneration, you made your point.
There’s just no two ways about it – Death Warrant is fucking bizarre.
Listen, I know CineMEH can seem pretty dude-centric at times. What with all the talk of boobs and gore and boners and explosions and such, there must be a significant percentage of the fairer sex that feels not particularly catered to, nay, downright excluded…especially in the throes of JCVD Appreciation Week.
But JCVD doesn’t rely on this potential energy to carry his weight. The man does not rest on his laurels. No, he took shit into his own hands. In my head, his first day on set went like this:
James Franco, I want to like you, I don’t know why, but I do. You were alright as Daniel Desario on “Freaks and Geeks.” You were no Bill Haverchuck, but you held your own. I couldn’t of cared less for your role in “Spiderman,” but you really pulled your shit together and knocked one out of the park as the lovably dopey stoner, Saul Silver, in “Pineapple Express.” Even though you haven’t dazzled me, for some reason I’ve been keeping my fingers crossed. But after watching “Good Time Max,” the movie that you co-wrote and directed, I’m throwing in the towel. 
If i didn’t know any better, I would have assumed the part of Max was written by a nine-year old. Max is handsome, liked by everybody, and is always the life of the party, but to top it all off he’s also a certified genius. Franco really drives this point home too as he solves moderately difficult math equations (like 36 times 24), lands himself a cushy job writing computer code, and constantly states, “I am a genius.” This would all be fine if it ever went anywhere, but it doesn’t. The genius aspect is completely irrelevant, and though we’re all supposed to connect or relate with Max, I couldn’t feel anything but contempt and annoyance with him, from beginning to end. I think James Franco tried his best, but like swimming against a rip tide, the harder he tried, the worse the situation got. 
