Netflix is underway in France on Jean-Claude Van Damme action-comedy The Last Mercenary from director David Charhon (The Other Side Of The Tracks). Also starring in the film are Alban Ivanov, Assa Sylla, Samir Decazza, Patrick Timsit, Eric Judor and Miou-Miou.
Van Damme will play a mysterious former secret service agent who must urgently return to France when his estranged son (Decazza) is falsely accused of arms and drug trafficking by the government, following a blunder by an overzealous bureaucrat (Ivanov) and a mafia operation.
The film is written by David Charhon and Ismaël Sy Savané and produced by Jean-Charles Levy, Nicolas Manuel (Forecast Pictures), Olivier Albou, Laurence Schonberg (Other Angle Pictures), David Charhon, Jakéma Charhon, Eponine Maillet (Mony Films), Olias Barco, Vlad Riashyn (Apple Tree).
Van Damme said: “The Last Mercenary is an incredibly exciting project and allows me to take on a new genre. I’ve always been a fan of Jean-Paul Belmondo and I hope to take up the torch of action comedy in my own way. David Charhon’s script brings all these elements together in a very successful way – a beautiful story with emotion, a lot of action and a lot of humor. I’m also very happy to work alongside a new generation of talent such as Alban Ivanov, Assa Sylla and Samir Decazza, but also to be reunited on screen with the creme de la creme of French actors such as Patrick Timsit, Eric Judor, Miou-Miou and Valérie Kaprisky.”
Charhon added: “I want to return to the great tradition of action films of the ’80s and ’90s – those cult films we all love where the heroes were out of the ordinary, the stunts were all more impressive and truer than life, and all punctuated with humor. Only Jean-Claude could embody this unparalleled golden age of cinema.”
Deadline’s Andreas Wiseman contributed to this post.
