In Hell (2003)

I have decided that I am on an Action bender and I need to catch up on my Van Damme filmography and I have seen a lot, but there is also a lot I haven't seen. This time, we are looking at the 2003 action drama In Hell which was directed by Ringo Lam (City On Fire) and it stars Jean Claude Van Damme (Black Water) as Kyle LeBlanc, an American living and working in Russia who one unfaithful night hears his wife being murdered on the phone. As he rushes home to try and save her, it is too late as she has passed away. The man who did the deed is freed and in an act of rage, LeBlanc kills him right in the court house sending him to jail. The only problem is that this is a jail where the warden gets greedy and men are forced to fight including a now broken and crazy LeBlanc who after so many wins is forced to fight the baddest man from a rival jail played by Michael Bailey Smith (The Hills Have Eyes). The film also stars Lawrence Taylor (The Waterboy) as Prisoner 451, Lloyd Battista (Treasure of The Four Crowns) as General Hruschov, Carlos Gómez (Desperado) as Tolik, Manol Manolov (The Black Dahlia) as Ivan, Chris Moir (Hollywood Mom) as Billy, Billy Rieck (NYPD Blue) as Coolhand, Alan Davidson (Rounders) as Malakai, Robert LaSardo (King Of New York) as Usup, and Juan Fernández (The Collector) as Shubka.

With all things considered, this actually wasn't a bad film from the Muscles From Brussels as this was in the era of him looking like he's making hundreds of films. There are some parts of the story that I certainly take issue with and that has more to do with character development especially with Lawrence Taylor. LT for most of the film looks like he doesn't give a crap about anyone, but one scene he enacts some revenge on someone for betraying a friend and its like since when did he care about that character? There were some things that were added that I could have done without like the fact that we knew this bug that flies around is symbolic because it's his wife or at least in his mind he believes that, but then finally after all he has been through the big turns into the ghost of her. Is this all in his head or is this reality and why did we need that? While I thought that they could have hired actual Russians to be in the film, I did like a lot of their selections like LaSardo, Juan Fernández, and some of the other goons that we see like Raicho Vasilev who plays Andrei the first goon of all goons. I wish they had done with him because he was actually good at what he was doing. The cinematography and the editing was well done in the film and while this may not be his best film, this is definitely up there for JCVD. So, I am going to go ahead and give the film an B- for a final grade.