POUND OF FLESH is Van Damme's newest thriller, set in the Philippines and with a great premise: the story starts as a confused Van Damme wakes up, groggy from being drugged, in a hotel room and makes a horrifying discovery: his kidney's been trafficked while he was unconscious. The stakes are raised with an additional sub-plot which sees Van Damme's niece on the brink of death, requiring the very kidney that's been snatched. So we have our ageing action star on a quest as he hunts for the organ traffickers responsible and kicks plenty of ass along the way.

The set-up is great but sadly POUND OF FLESH lacks when it comes to the execution. Director Ernie Barbarash does a very poor job when it comes to the filming style, choosing an over-edited mess which makes the film look choppy and somehow dull. The fight choreography is poor too, hiding some decent martial arts fighters in too-dark backdrops and over editing the fights so that they're generic and predictable. I still like Van Damme, and the supporting cast are okay here, but the film as a whole is just about passable rather than being the exciting thrill-ride it should be.

The surprise is the writing and storyline. I love a good story and this delivers. Violence was expected and not too gratuitous. The story has enough twists and heart to carry all the way through. I totally enjoyed this.

I don't usually write reviews for bad films. But being a huge Van Damme fan and loving his older movies, i thought that this would be a good film as Van Damme really hyped it up. Unfortunately the film falls apart very quickly. The most funny and annoying part of the story and most ironic i guess, is that they still use the Kick boxer line "Our parents got divorced i stayed with dad and my brother went with mom" to establish his thick french accent compared to the American accent that his brother has. The Acting was cheesy, mediocre at best. Van Damme probably was the best actor in the film. The story was a Van Damme story with a stupid twist, which would not have swayed the character in the end, but its the story tellers felt that Van Damme's character needed more drama and so we have the ending we get. The CGI was extremely bad. I couldn't understand why they had to use Green screen for the night club when in the next scene they are clearly standing in a similar if not the same actual night club that they just CGIéd before. Anyways, i hope that Van Damme fans can enjoy the film solely based on being JCVD fans