God Damme! The Top 5 Jean-Claude Van Damme Movies Of All Time

2. Bloodsport (1988): Okay, you can take what I just wrote about this movie with a grain of salt. It only pales in comparison to Kickboxer but rocks on its own. The essential pleasure of this film is its spot-on use of archetypal characters that surround a slightly bland Van Damme. The lovably oafish Donald Gibb as Van Damme's best friend is the beer-drinking ugly American who greets a fight to the death with the casual confidence of an archer entering a biker-bar darts tournament. Even more memorable is villain Bolo Yeung, an actor whose fleshy, singularly menacing face competes for attention with his bouncing-ball pec-flexing. The character's signature finishing move, in which he splits the shinbones of his rivals with a grazing heel strike, is genuinely shudder inducing. And Van Damme's character is given a justifiable reason for vengeance after his beer-drinking buddy falls to the baddy. It's bloody. It's sporting. Just don't say it's better than Kickboxer.

3.  Death Warrant (1990): Van Damme plays Burke, a Canadian cop who goes undercover in an American prison to root out a black market organ-harvesting operation. This movie does have hues of the darker, less fun atmosphere that colored Van Damme's too-serious mid-career STV misses. That noir-on-the-cheap vibe, however, is responsible for creating the best villain in the JCVD cannon. "You can't kill me Burke, I'm the Sandman," taunts Patrick Kilpatrick's frighteningly resilient psychopath. But that only means more opportunity for Van Damme to wobble around groggily in his classic wide karate stance before rallying his senses to chest kick said Sandman into a lava-hot open boiler — and then again onto a steel bolt. That would be too much of a spoiler if it were actually the end of the final epic fight scene. It's not . . . because you can't kill The Sandman.

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