To the list of things you never thought you'd read --"America elects Black president, gas drops to 80c a litre, Red Sox win World Series," etc. -- you can now add "Jean-Claude Van Damme gives a great acting performance."

Of course, he's playing himself in the meta-movie JCVD, but he shines in a quiet, vulnerable affecting way that approaches total honesty (or the semblance of same) -- this against the backdrop of an armed robbery that normally would call for him to simply kick derriere and collect his paycheque.

Credit young French director Mabrouk El Mechri -- an avowed fan of the oeuvre of "the Muscles from Brussels" -- for breaking Van Damme out of his macho action-film straitjacket with this funny, melancholic and ironic twist on Dog Day Afternoon, one that incorporates actual elements of the actors' own life into acts of self-contemplation. Schwarzenegger and Seagal wish they'd broken this barrier of respectability.

JCVD begins with what is a too-true slice of Van Damme's current life -- sleepwalking through a cheapie action film, missing punches and otherwise infuriating the young Asian director (a nod to John Woo?) who sarcastically tells his translator, "Does he think we're doing Citizen Kane?"

Switch to a family court chamber where Van Damme is losing a custody battle for his daughter (Saskia Flanders). To escape it all, he returns to Belgium to visit his parents -- ironically, the worst place to escape, since everyone from the cab driver to little old ladies on the street know him and demand his attention. ("You're much nicer on the screen," the cabbie tells the exhausted, uncommunicative Van Damme.)

Word comes of a bounced cheque and a funding snafu relating to his child support, and Van Damme heads to a post office to wire money.

There, the-gang-that-couldn't-shoot-straight has taken the staff and customers hostage, and good fortune has given the gangleader (Zinedine Soualem) an "out" -- the most famous man in Belgium upon whom to pin their caper. Soon Van Damme is on the phone, "line-reading" as it were, pretending without much enthusiasm that he is the ringleader, the better to solve his child-payment woes.

Bruges (Francois Damiens), the officer in charge of the hostage crisis, is no smarter than the crooks, swallowing the concocted story, as it unfolds into a media cause celebre.

A "real" hostage-crisis turns out to be a perfect situation in which to deconstruct the fantasy and reality of Jean-Claude Van Damme. The other hostages are baffled outright by his inability to simply turn super-hero and save them. The reality, of course, is that -- movie reality aside -- even the world's greatest martial artist would still be just another victim in the face of a gang with guns.

Anybody expecting JCVD to turn into Hard Target at any point will be disappointed -- although director El Mechri does create "fantasy" sequences that poke fun of that notion. Instead, JCVD moves slowly and deliberately toward its only-somewhat-violent and decidedly un-Hollywood ending, marked by a terrific monologue delivered in craggy closeup by Van Damme.

JCVD turns the macho movie stereotype inside-out, allowing the scared and vulnerable to show itself without shame. And, who knows, it just may mark the birth of a "new" Jean-Claude Van Damme.

(This film is rated 14-A)

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