Leave
it to JCVD to give an urban legend a Taken
twist. Deacon, a hardboiled kidnapping & recovery specialist will wake
up in an icy Manila bathtub sans one kidney. However, he has a very particular
set of skills, skills that he has acquired over a very long career that will
help him track down that kidney, because it was already spoken for. Deacon was
supposed to donate it to his ailing niece and he is not about to disappoint in Ernie
Barbarash’s Pound of Flesh (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in select theaters.
Deacon
has yet to meet his niece and he has been estranged from his brother George for
years, but a man has to do what a man has to do. Unfortunately, that means
Deacon is also pretty easy to set up. When he saves a damsel in distress, who
happens to be just his type, it leads to a woozy night on the town and an ice
bath. George, the devout Catholic is rather disappointed in his carelessness.
Of course, Deacon is not about to take this lying down, even if has just gone
under the knife. Reconnecting with Kung, a dodgy former comrade, Deacon pops
some morphine and starts following the trail of the organ harvesting ring.
Maybe
you think you have seen this all before, but keep in mind, in this case, Van
Damme uses a Gideon Bible to beat the snot out of people. You can call that
getting Biblical. However, it really isn’t objectionable, considering how
seriously Pound handles issues
stemming from George’s Catholicism.
Frankly,
the combination of Van Damme and an unpretentious action-specialist like
Barbarash inspires a great deal of confidence. As in Assassination Games and Falcon Rising, there are no over-the-top set piece spectacles in Pound. Instead, the film is all about Van
Damme putting his foot in the bad guys’ behinds. Barbarash understands how to
show off his stars’ skills, giving us full body shots and absolutely no shaky
cams.
Indeed,
Van Damme still does his thing in Pound.
All his strengths and weaknesses remain what they always were, which is good or
bad, depending on your perspective. He is deliberately playing a somewhat older
cat, but he has not lost much in terms of physique and flexibility. Aki Aleong adds
some extra veteran seasoning as the crafty old Kung. The Manila backdrops also helps
give Pound a distinctive flair.
Sadly,
Pound is dedicated to the memory of
co-star Darren Shahlavi, probably best known as Twister in Ip Man 2. He also had massive skills and considerable presence. Pound showcases the former more than the
latter, but as Drake the chief henchman, he is definitely a worthy opponent for
Deacon. Shahlavi could have very easily broken out with genre fans, becoming
something like the next Scott Adkins, so his early death and its mangled
reporting in the media is especially tragic.