Jean-Claude Van Damme’s glory days have been behind him for some time now. After becoming one of the biggest action stars through films like ‘Bloodsport’, ‘Street Fighter’ and ‘Sudden Death’, he turned down an extremely lucrative offer in the mid-1990s (more on that here) and subsequently faced a series of flops – from which the Belgian’s career never fully recovered.
The few films he’s starred in since the early 2000s made it to theaters at all, and in between the meta-action comedy “JCVD” (2008), two John Hyams-directed “Universal Soldier” sequels (the film with its unusual approach) hugely popular among fans) and “The Expendables 2” (in which Van Damme played the villain), there is a lot of second-rate direct-to-DVD material in his late filmography. Or have you ever heard of “Kill them!”, “Swelter” or “UFO – Try to keep calm”?
However, if you go back to 2012, you can discover a special curiosity in Van Damme’s cinematic vita: what on earth is behind the title “Rzhevskiy protiv Napoleona”? (in German: “Rzhevsky against Napoleon”)? If you take a closer look at the film, it becomes no less strange: in addition to Van Damme, the cast list also includes a certain Volodymyr Selenskyj, the incumbent president of Ukraine – in the role of the French emperor and general, recently also played by Joaquin Phoenix, embodied in Ridley Scott’s monumental biopic “Napoleon”!
Here you can see the movie poster for “Rzhevskiy protiv Napoleona”:
The work, peppered with countless parodies of film history, is a loose continuation of the comedy ‘Hitler Goes Kaput!’, which was also directed by director Maryus Vaysberg. The focus is on Napoleon Bonaparte’s Russian campaign in 1812:
To buy time, General Kutosov (Vladimir Simonov) devises a plan to have Napoleon distracted by a woman. To do this, he hires Lieutenant Rzhevsky (Pavel Derevyanko), who is considered one of Russia’s biggest con artists. is currently serving a life sentence for allegedly promoting the sexual revolution. If he manages to use his seduction skills on Napoleon, disguised as a woman, he is pardoned.
For some reason, Van Damme agreed to do a guest appearance on the historical drag comedy and even waived a fee for it – the “Knock Off” star was only reimbursed for accommodation costs. Nevertheless, the film, which was released exclusively in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, received little attention – and even less love. On the film database IMDb, “Rzhevskiy protiv Napoleona” has only a measly average rating of 2.8 out of 10 stars.
On letterboxd there are some comments from users who have seen the film, and most of them hardly say anything good about the Russian-Ukrainian production. For example, user TTBTrain writes: ‘The biggest pile of shit I’ve ever seen. I don’t even know how I got through this pathetic mess. JCVD is barely playing and I’m just pissed. Don’t ever watch this nonsense.’
A few years later, Zelensky gave up his acting career to run for Ukraine’s highest office. He has been defending the country against Vladimir Putin and his war of aggression against Ukraine for two years now. In 2023, Van Damme was featured in a video message from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense in which he thanked his home country Belgium for its support in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.