The Gardener (Le Jardinier), not to be confused with the film by Gary Daniels and Robert Bronzi, reunites Jean-Claude Van Damme (Universal Soldier: Judgment Day, Timecop) and David Charhon (The Other Side of the Tracks, Castaway), who directed him in The Last Mercenary. And like that film, it's an action comedy, but with a more comical edge and more brutal action.
This time, The Muscles of Brussels plays Leo, a man who simply wants to take care of the plants on the large estate of Serge Shuster (Michaël Youn, Around the World in 80 Days, The Divorce Club), special advisor to the French president. No one seems to be entirely sure how he got the position, and they consider him a bit odd, but he does a good job, so they've allowed him to stay.
Stars: Álvaro Rico, Cecilia Suárez, Ivan Massagué
Serge and his highly dysfunctional family—his wife Mia (Nawell Madani, Head in the Clouds, Thicker Than Water), his young daughter Charlotte, and Alice (Carla Poquin), his daughter from a previous marriage—spend a season at the estate. They're unaware that Serge has been marked for death by the Prime Minister as part of an annual culling of troublemakers. But they soon find out when a covert operations team is set up to eliminate them. The script by Charhon, Vincent De Brus (The Ballad of Titus, Ashes) and Sébastien Fechner (Dream Team, The Cartoon) follows a well-trodden path, uniting the lethal Leo with the hapless Serge and little Charlotte as they face off against France's finest and the three so-called Angels of Death, codenamed Phoebus (Jérôme Le Banner, Asterix at the Olympic Games, Babylon A.D.), Esmeralda (Matthias Quiviger, Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom, 14 Days to Feel Better), and Quasimodo (Kaaris, The Gorilla, City of Rogues).
Although best known as an action hero, Van Damme has demonstrated his comedic talent in his Jean-Claude Van Johnson series and in films such as Welcome to the Jungle and, of course, JCVD. Here, when he's not trading blows with the bad guys, he's funny with a straight face in his role as a gardener with a mysterious and deadly past.
Most of the more obvious jokes are the work of Youn, who, apparently, is a well-known comedian in his home country. He has some funny moments, such as when he confronts the murderous trio, adrenaline pumping and dressed in an SS officer's uniform, all to the soundtrack of "It's Raining Men." Unfortunately, he can also be extremely irritating, Kevin Hart-style. Perhaps some of the humor was lost in translation, or perhaps it's considered funny in France, but it just didn't work for me. More than once, I wished Van Damme would beat him up so I wouldn't have to listen to him.
Although, unfortunately, he doesn't, he does manage to deliver a good beating and looks good doing it. While I'm sure his stunt double did most of the fighting, Van Damme himself looks better than ever. The action scenes, primarily fights with a car chase toward the end, look good. Stunt coordinator Laurent Demianoff (Knife + Heart, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets) and his team do an excellent job recreating the film's chaos.
However, one thing I wasn't convinced about was the dialogue. The Gardener is a French film, but the copy I saw was in English, and it seemed like most of the cast was dubbed. In several scenes, the actors' lips clearly didn't match what they were saying. Van Damme at least provided his own English dialogue, and some others could have done so as well, but it often seemed like their lines were added after the fact. They should have opted to subtitle it like Netflix does.
Overall, I found The Gardener to be an entertaining film and better than several of Van Damme's recent films, especially the disappointing Kill 'Em All 2. The film's final act even manages to recall Universal Soldier in some ways without slipping into science fiction. The result is a decent action comedy, although the jokes didn't always convince me.
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