"Draw from your models the proof that they exist with their oddities and engimas." - Robert Bresson
If you're anywhere near my age and have distinct memories of your movie-going experience as a kid, I'd guess that there are certain action movie milestone moments that we share in common. Indy working his way down the belly of the Nazi transport truck as it's speeding along at 60 mph, Ahnold begging the Predator to come kill him, to do it naaah-oow, Willis jumping off Nakatomi Plaza with the firehose tied around his waist. These are seminal moments.
Another is the first time that you saw Van Damme pull his trademark split, Whether it was in avoiding being electrocuted in his kitchen during the first act of Timecop, or in delivering a nut-crunching uppercut to his adversary in Bloodsport, the move was unique and amazing and unimitatable. By that time, you'd already seen a million on-screen fights, seen Stallone or Schwarznegger mow down myriad bad guys using every weapon conceived--all that kind of stuff was standard fare. But no one had pulled off a move like VD's perfect vector-straight split. It was so impressive and so enthralled moviegoers that he pretty much had to include the move in every movie in which he appeared, it became a cameo-worthy character in itself, as much a part of his persona as his awkward French-Belgian accent or his inflated delts.
And so here comes the Volvo corporation in 2013 trying to think of a way to promote the stability and control of their new line of industrial trucks. And VD is well into action-hero retirement having long since faded from big screen prominence. They say genius is largely about seeing a connection where others don't, so credit the marketing brass at Volvo for their stroke of genius on this one.
After all, who are making purchasing decisions regarding big ass industrial trucks? An educated guess would be that it's mostly men, mostly middle-aged, mostly guys who years ago spend disposable income on movie tickets so they could see VD kick some ass and pull off a split at an opportune moment. It's roughly the same tactic as bringing back the VW Beetle in the mid-1990s to appeal to baby-boomers who came of age in the 1960s and now had the income to spend on the revamped car, nostagia being such a powerful force in shaping cultural identity and so forth. Even the Enya soundtrack--inexplicable in the other spots of the campaign, but perfectly placed, here--hearkens back to the era of lycra and bright pastels and action heroes who didn't need CGI to help them kick ass.
And so they had the target demographic nailed, but could VD pull off the stunt? Could he still do the split without tearing a groin muscle or dislocating his hip? Clearly, that was not a problem, and so then it was a question of tone. And this is where the spot really shines.
In contrast to a previous spot where a professional slackliner girl tightrope walks between two speeding trucks, where the style of the piece is much closer to action movies of today (frenetic disorienting edits, helicopter shots, shaky handheld camerawork supplemented by the standard GoPro footage, soundtrack building to moment where she just barely leaps to safety as the trucks enter the tunnels), the VD spot is all about peace. The peace of VD's acceptance with where he has arrived in life, the peace of the quietly retreating trucks, the peace of the sunset and the peace of mind, ostensibly, that comes from owning a truck that handles so impeccably. It's all this peace that will allow VD to stay suspended between the two massive moving trucks, legs as split as they've ever been, without falling in what would likely be a hard to watch accident.
Gone are the zillion cuts multiple cameras in favor of one long tracking master that starts in close on VD's closed eyes as he meditates on his career. The tongue-in-cheek voiceover feels true to the VD we remember who was at once a serious action hero and also one who realized that all action heroes are essentially cartoon characters in the cultural landscape. And not the sullen, introspective graphic novel action heroes of the 21st century, either--the heroes of VD's heyday had a silliness about them that both they and their audiences embraced. So he's both still the Hollywood caricature and also a relic of a bygone era, sort of Norma Desmond with a bigger upper body. It feels good to see that he still has it split-wise, but even more gratifying is getting the sense that, unlike Desmond, he's achieved some kind of acceptance of the fact that it's all over. I'm no longer a star, but I can still do this, dammit. It's using VD and his star persona to its fullest extent, and in creating the stage for the display, Volvo gets a deserved brand boost and viral treatment for having allowed the tribute to happen.
But also, lest VD get a little too excited about his role in the viral nature of his spot, consider Volvo's previous star attraction: