(CNN)Jean-Claude Van Damme remains impressively limber, but that's a uncommon item successful "The Last Mercenary," which features the Muscles from Brussels successful a Paris-sent embarrassment.
Netflix acquired the French-language enactment drama because, well, wherefore not? But the movie proves that having a consciousness of wit astir oneself and being comic tin beryllium 2 rather antithetic things.
The allure of seeing Van Damme successful enactment was the evident come-on for this slim vehicle, whose code approximates a live-action cartoon. Silly is fine, but anserine usually isn't.
Van Damme plays Richard Brumère, a legendary secret-service cause nicknamed "The Mist," who disappeared 25 years earlier. Before that helium fathered a son, Archibald (Samir Decazza), who has grown up unaware of his lineage, different than the immunity statement that his dada negotiated with the authorities earlier dropping retired of sight.
When the immunity gets abruptly lifted, Archibald is instantly endangered, drafting Brumère retired of the shadows and into his life. But the kid proves that the pome tin autumn a agelong mode from the tree, responding to threats with fright and flight, not fight.
Directed and co-written by David Charhon, "The Last Mercenary" offers decidedly low-brow gags and a weird mish-mash of characters. The transgression who has stolen Archibald's individuality and immunity, for example, is obsessed with the movie "Scarface," perpetually quoting and acting similar Al Pacino's Tony Montana character.
Everyone but Archibald, meantime -- including his pals Dalila (Assa Sylla) and her member (Djimo), who are pulled into the espionage crippled -- learns that the spy is really his long-lost dad, though the father-son bonding is tiresome and strained.
Van Damme tried thing akin a fewer years agone successful the Amazon series "Jean-Claude Van Johnson," and the results present mightiness beryllium adjacent worse. Everything is absurdly implicit the apical but the uninspired enactment sequences, made lone somewhat much palatable by the information Van Damme's quality endeavors to debar sidesplitting anyone, adjacent the assassins helium winds up pummeling connected aggregate occasions.
The supporting formed includes French veterans Miou-Miou and Valérie Kaprisky, but thing present truly works, and immoderate of the jokes -- specified arsenic references to Brumère's past intersexual prowess -- autumn to a cringe-worthy level.
Netflix is progressively relying connected planetary productions to banal its original-programming shelves, and Van Damme's box-office tally successful the 1990s makes him a marketable summation to those efforts.
After astir 15 minutes of "The Last Mercenary," though, adjacent if you can't bash splits similar Van Damme the temptation is to divided -- and to paraphrase "Scarface," accidental goodbye to him and his small friends.
"The Last Mercenary" premieres July 30 connected Netflix.
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