His career has spanned more than three decades, and averages out to at least one movie every couple of years, so you've seen at least two or three movies with Jean Claude Van Damme. As one of our most beloved action heroes and an expert in martial arts, The Muscles from Brussels has appeared in some intimidating roles. Here are his ten most badass characters, and considering his body of work, just choosing ten was quite the challenge!
It's too bad that we can't put the Predator on this list. JCVD was originally cast for the part but left because he didn't like the original concepts for the alien suit. Another version of the story says he was fired because he wanted the Predator to be a kick-boxer. Good thing there are plenty of other roles from which to choose. Unfortunately, the World of Warcraft commercial and the Jean-Claude Van Johnson TV series don't count. They're both brilliant, but he's just playing himself.
Colonel Guile, Street Fighter (1994)
This prominent character from the popular Street Fighter series of video games took badassery to a whole other level when Van Damme brought him to life on the silver screen. The character borrows a few things from the original video game, like catchphrases and basic plotlines, while other features like his rank as a military commander and his aim to end Bison's corruption and rescue a friend are unique to the movie. You have to have some gravitas to hold your own with Raul Julia, who is having as much fun chewing on the script as Van Damme is. Both actors play their characters to the hilt. Rumor has it that the cast was playing this up to be a parody, thus the overly dramatic performances.
Ben Archer, Wake of Death (2004)
A revenge story that JCVD made to recall the heady action hero days of the early 1990s, this character is an interesting mix of good and evil, which makes him more dangerous than the average underworld enforcer and martial arts expert. When his wife, a social worker for the INS, gets on the wrong side of the local Chinese Triad and is murdered, Archer has to find the perpetrators to avenge her death and save the kids she was trying to protect. He's a bad guy who gets the chance to do something good, and he does it with the cool enthusiasm of a bad guy. One of the later offerings in the Van Damme library that shows he can still be a classic action hero.
Lukas, The Bouncer (2018)
Some of JCVD's more recent work has a profound dramatic touch, and this is one of the more notable examples. This film could be a continuation of Wake of Death, as its also about the exploits of an enforcer for a seedy organization, but the tone and setting of this more recent movie are completely different. This is a bona fide film noir, filmed in French and set in Europe, with some actions sequences thrown in that only Lukas could pull off even though he's older than most of his colleagues.
Initially, his job is legit if not messy, but one night things go wrong in the club, and he agrees to become a mole for the cops to dodge a murder charge and keep his daughter from getting swept away by child services. Lukas stays tough while protecting his kid, and there's nothing more bad-ass than that.
Chance Boudreaux, Hard Target (1993)
A character has to be hardcore to rock this mullet. "Chance" is French for "Lucky" and considering some of the risks this guy takes it's more than just his name. This is the story of an already hardened vigilante getting mixed up in something really big, and with the police force on strike, he takes on a world of criminals with no backup. It's cult classic because of some crazy action sequences and unbelievable antics on the part of Chance. If you read a short story while you were in high school called The Most Dangerous Game then you already know the basic premise and its chilling implications. With John Woo's first American directorial debut and Van Damme at the peak of his career, this character rates high on the bad-ass scale.
Max Walker, Timecop (1994)
Timecop has a place in the general canon of how time travel works along with other films like The Terminator and Back to the Future. Max Walker is a cop who not only has the chance to catch a criminal but reverse time and prevent his wife's murder. He gets to seek revenge and erase the tragedy in the first place, which is like having your cake and eating it for any action hero. Walker is good at what he does in the first place, and when the fight becomes personal he takes it up another notch. The movie is famous for some of Walker's hilariously brutal quips, like the Broadway joke while he's repeatedly kicking someone, and the steamy intimate scenes, one of which opens the movie.
Luc Deveraux (GR44), Universal Soldier franchise
JCVD's movies have inspired numerous sequels and spin-offs, and the Universal Soldier films are among the most successful. Fellow action heavyweight Dolph Lungren s the cast as the bad soldier. The backstory here is pretty ambitious and takes the audience all the way back to the Vietnam War, adding some high stakes for all the characters involved.
Deveroux was a badass soldier to begin with, which is why he was chosen to become part of a specially enhanced military unit and dubbed GR44. The catch is that he was clinically dead and his memories are taken away from him. Deveroux has to use his enhanced abilities to his past and escape from Dolph Lungren so he can have a future.
Frank Dux, Bloodsport (1988)
One of the things that makes this role so amazing is that Frank Dux isn't fictional, at least not according to him. Tanaka, the ninja master, was apparently a real person who trained Dux from childhood specifically to compete in the Kumite competition, or Bloodsport. After winning the tournament in 1975, he invented his own martial art, Dux Ryu Ninjutsu. Obviously, liberties have been taken with the film for dramatic effect, like dodging the military authorities and rescuing a journalist. The real Frank Dux, however, was still pretty badass and so is Van Damme when he plays the role.
Kurt Sloane, Kickboxer (1989)
Kurt is just a regular guy. He's not a cop, a secret agent or a professional fighter. Why would he even be on the list? The dramatic character arc that takes Kurt from sweet, naive younger brother to a vengeful Muy Thai boxing machine is close to tragic, and at times it's hard to watch. The normally gentle Kurt is driven to seek vengeance after his brother is permanently injured in a dirty fight, and his path leads him into the dangerous world of underground fighting tournaments and brutal training rituals. What keeps Kurt from descending into darkness entirely is either is love for his brother or My Li, his trainer's daughter. This, along with the classic storyline, was partly what prompted a reboot and sequel in 2016. Van Damme appears as a trainer and a younger actor, Alain Moussi, takes the lead role.
Gibson Rickenbacker, Cyborg (1989)
The reason most people describe this movie as a Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome ripoff is because that's pretty much what it is. The villain is dressed in chain mail like Tina Turner was wearing as Auntie Entity. The name is similar, too - Max is played by Mel Gibson and that character's surname is "Rockatansky." Both characters wander a post-apocalyptic wasteland, haunted by the murders of their loved ones. It's a tale as old as time.
All that aside, Van Damme's Gibson could hold his own in the wasteland, and actually plays the tough but somber warrior just as well as Mel Gibson or Thomas Hardy. The escort quest the character takes on is a compelling one, the main character takes as many punches as he gives. There are some painful fight scenes in this movie and it's probably more brutally honest than the other dystopian movies of the time, even those in the Mad Max franchise. Gibson isn't so much tough as clever and stubborn, and we root for him every time he somehow refuses to die.
Villain, The Expendables 2 (2012)
It's nice to see Van Damme still out there working, especially when he plays a character like Villain. This nasty piece of work is everything we know a Van Damme film role to be, plus one more quality. He is viciously, maniacally evil. The plans he makes and carries out in this movie cross the line literally minutes within his appearance on the screen, and we know right away this version of Van Damme is irredeemable. JCVD has played villains before but this guy blows them all away. Seriously though, Villain likes knives and martial arts, which he uses to cut down his enemies, friends, or whoever. Which is what makes it so satisfying to watch as he is hunted down by a group of equally ruthless mercenaries seeking revenge.
