Highly Overrated But Still Good

As Good As It Gets

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I love B action movies like this you can find on youtube and this is one JCVD's best straight to video flicks. This has a good cheesy story line that's like "Undisputed" and "Felon" combined. It for sure has some good bloody fights and action throughout. It's definitely cheesy/funny with L.T.'s acting. One thing you'd learn from this movie is to stay away from Russia!. Which made me wonder how Lawrence Taylor and the Mexican guy who always plays a thug end up their in the first place. Overall, solid B straight to DVD action flick, good to watch and enjoy a few beers or joints, pizza and have a little entertainment on a Saturday night!6/10

With Ringo Lam directing and Jean-Claude Van Damme starring, I was expecting In Hell to be a cheesy, slam-bang, all-out fight-fest full of stereotypical hard-nut characters smashing the crap out of each other at every opportunity; what I actually got was a surprisingly grim and unflinchingly brutal prison drama, albeit full of stereotypical hard-nut characters smashing the crap out of each other at every opportunity.Lam directs with style, Van Damme is actually pretty good in a role that requires him to act for a change, and for a while the going is good, but the film is eventually sunk by a script that develops ideas above its station: in a blatant attempt to elevate the film to Shawshank/Midnight Express status, Van Damme's character, Kyle LeBlanc, takes a journey through his own personal hell, unbelievably becomes a symbol of hope and inspiration for the other prisoners, and risks his life to protect a mentally handicapped killer against the corrupt guards; all the while, clichéd brute with a brain, prisoner 451 (Lawrence Taylor), delivers a solemn, philosophical voice-over.None of this 'emotional drama' is particularly convincing (especially the previously utterly ruthless Russian mafioso coming to admire the American), but the best (or worst) is saved for last when Kyle drives straight out of the prison's front gate in what must be the dumbest jail-break in cinematic history.

I always wondered what happen to JCVD... Now I see... Wow this movie was bad! Not just a bit bad, but cringed bad...Yet the movie could have been so much more. Especially with a budget with 17 million. You would figure that somebody spent some time on directing or producing. The best actor was Lawrence Taylor and he did not speak much.I guess the real problem with the movie was the plot and how it jumped from one corner to the other.Let me illustrate, Lawrence Taylor... A single coloured person in a Russian jail... Yeah that is believable! What they should have done is taken somebody from the Kozaks. I am very disappointed because I had hopes for this movie...

IN HELL must be the most broadcast film on channel 5 . There never seems to be a gap of more than three months before it's broadcast again . It's not a film that was relesed to any fanfair in Britain and why should it since it stars Van Damme and you know what you're going to get with Jean Claude One can't help thinking that someone on the production team wanted to do something a bit more profound than the usual JCVD spiel . It's set in Russia and is somewhat grittier and slower moving than the usual Van Damme movie . It also tries to emulate the Russian psyche of mans relationship to nature with a butterfly being used to inspire the protagonist to endure the unendurable . Is Van Damme going to become a surrogate for Solzhenitsyn ? Unfortunately no and there is something unfortunate in that . Certainly the film contains every cliché known to the sub genre of sadistic guards , prison rape , gang warfare and prison b*tches . No cliché is left unturned and despite it being gritter than normal with some very explicit violence it's just a exploitation prison movie at heart when it could have been something more