Six Bullets (2012)

Six Bullets (2012)

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Joe Flanigan, Anna-Louise Plowman, Charlotte Beaumont, Steve Nicholson, Kris Van Damme, Uriel Emil, Louis Dempsey, Bianca Van Damme
Director: Ernie Barbarash
Action Director: Frederic Mastrovalerio

 

It's interesting: I haven't seen as many DTV films from Jean-Claude Van Damme as I have from Steven Seagal, but there is an interesting contrast. Since the 2011 or so, Seagal's output has been largely defined by unwatchable dreck in which he gets top billing and front cover status, but actually only has limited screen time. Think movies like The Asian Connection and The Perfect Weapon. Jean-Claude Van Damme, on the other hand, seems to have upped his game ever since he won critical acclaim for JCVD. He has certainly evolved as an actor since the early days of his career, and one of the benefits of making DTV films in Eastern Europe is that he no longer needs an excuse to sport an accent! His movies aren't always great, but he seems to be putting forth a lot more effort than Seagal.

Six Bullets is, for all intents and purposes, Jean-Claude Van Damme's take on Taken (heh). The Muscles from Brussels plays Samson Gaul, a former legionnaire and mercenary who now works as a butcher in the former Soviet satellite state of Moldova. Gaul occasionally gets called in to perform rescue missions. The film opens with Gaul entering a Eurotrash club-cum-brothel (hehe..."cum") to rescue a young boy from the sex traffickers who run the joint. His mission is successful, but the explosions he set off as diversions end up spreading to the building, and the resulting conflagration kills several teenage girls, who had been hidden in crawlspaces by their captors.

Six months later, an aging MMA fighter, Andrew Fayden (Stargate alum Joe Flanigan), arrives in Moldova for a fight that should revive his flagging career. His wife, Monica (Anna-Louise Plowman, of Seagal's The Foreigner), and daughter, Becky (Charlotte Beaumont, who had a small role in Jupiter Rising), are also along for the ride. While Monica is sleeping off her jet lag and Andrew is taking a shower, Becky meets a nice local named Amalia (Bianca Van Damme) who offers to accompany her to the ice machine. Bad move. Becky disappears and soon her parents are looking everywhere for her, but to no avail. 

Enter Samson Gaul (again). He's back to work at his butcher shop, haunted by visions of the young women whose deaths he inadvertently caused. Andrew shows up at his shop at the recommendation of Saul's son (Van Damme's real son Kris), who works for the State Department. Gaul initially balks at the idea of doing another search and rescue, but ultimately arrives at the conclusion that it is the only way he'll find any respite from his "hauntings."

Directed by DTV veteran Ernie Barbarash (Assassination Games; Falcon Rising; Pound of Flesh), Six Bullets is a suprisingly well-made and well-acted piece of low-budget action cinema. Barbarash places an emphasis on the characters as opposed to the violence and mayhem (although there is plenty of that) and allows Van Damme to flex his acting muscles as Gaul. Gaul spends much of the film wallowing in self-pity as he punishes himself daily for the error he made during the opening search-and-rescue sequence. The visuals of the dead girls, their faces covered in burns, are really well handled and give the film an almost-horror movie feel. This is fitting, considering how human trafficking has become one of the true horrors of our modern society. I've also noticed that almost every established action actor has dealt with this subject in one way or another--Dolph Lundgren has Skin Trade and The Mechanik; Liam Neeson has the Taken franchise; Seagal has Out of Reach; and JCVD has Six Bullets.

One thing I noted was how un-sleazy this film feels, compared to your average human trafficking film. A typical Steven Seagal film would run with the premise of sex trafficking to get multiple Eastern European wannabe starlets out of their clothes...and sometimes into bed with the big man himself. Van Damme seems to have gotten past that part of his career. Director Barbarash does include scantily-clad women in bars/brothels dancing to entice potential clients, but it doesn't feel like the sort of thing that is included just so the filmmakers have something to get off on.

French stunt coordinator Frederic Mastrovalerio handles the fight scenes, although this is not a high-octane action film. The best fight is actually in the beginning, when Van Damme kills a room full of human traffickers with a steak knife. That scene is expertly choreographed, filmed and edited. Van Damme does some fighting later on at a night club, where he beats some gangsters down with a metal baton. He also does a few moves against some mafia-types in his butcher shop. The finale, however, is more about the gunplay and building up suspense, rather than mindless fighting and jump kicks. The entire Fayden family gets involved in the final assault on the bad guys' lair, which is an abandoned Soviet prison. Our protagonists find themselves in some tight situations during the climax and have to make important moral decisions as they tussel with a force greater than them. 

Six Bullets is an honest-to-God good Van Damme film. It may not be his best from an action perspective, but there is enough heart and good acting on display to make it worth a view for veteran fans and DTV action junkies.