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The Last Mercenary is a new Jean-Claude Van Damme film which starts off brilliantly, as his son has been captured and Richard Brumére (Van Damme) somehow sneaked in to rescue him, hiding up in the ceiling, but then he’s not known as ‘The Mist’ for nothing.
Cue daft sight gags of the captured man falling over, then knocking himself out, and after he’s retrived, then it goes back to 24hrs earlier…
And we see cops going after Simyon (Nassim Lyes), a man who declares himself as “Tony M” to “Scarface (Push It To The Limit)” by Paul Engemann, with knowing nods to the camera.
Alas after that scene, it all falls apart. The film keeps randomly globetrotting, there’s a slapstick car chase that’s just asking for the Benny Hill music, Yakety Sax, the plot assumes that it’s feasible that Richard can be helping his son without letting him know he’s his father, and when Archie learns about his Dad, the family bonding aspect is beyond tedious.
In addition, there’s a plot involving government operatives – nothing about which is entertaining – and just makes you wonder what happened to the action on this supposed action film.
Also, Van Damme has a series of disguises in this film from terrible beard to Freddie Mercury moustache – plus a female wig, and there’s double-crossings which make no sense other than for lazy scriptwriting.
Every scene in The Last Mercenary feels like it was thrown together with zero regard for anything that came before, throwing continuity completely out of the window. It’s like one of those pictures you used to draw in school, when one person drew a head, folded the paper over, then the next drew another part of the body, folded it over, and so on. At the end, you fully opened up the piece of paper and wondered what the hell that was.
Basically, you can watch the opening scene, then flick through for the few fights and skip the rest. Should take about 15 minutes.
There’s also a post-credits scene…
The Last Mercenary is on Netflix from today, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD.
Check out the trailer below:
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 110 minutes
Release date: July 30th 2021
Studio: Netflix
Aspect Ratio: 2.00:1
Rating: 2/10
Director: David Charhon
Producers: Olivier Albou, Olias Barco, David Charhon, Jakéma Charhon, Jean-Charles Levy, Eponine Maillet, Nicolas Manuel, Vladislav Ryashin, Laurence Schonberg, Artemenko Yuriy
Screenplay: David Charhon, Ismaël Sy Savané
Cast:
Richard Brumére: Jean-Claude Van Damme
Alexandre: Alban Ivanov
Archibald: Samir Decazza
Dalila: Assa Sylla
Simyon: Nassim Lyes
Paul: Eric Judor
Marguerite: Miou-Miou
Commandant Jouard: Patrick Timsit
Ministre Sivardière: Valérie Kaprisky
Fernand: Michel Crémadès
Momo: Djimo
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.