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The 10 Greatest Villains That Jean-Claude Van Damme Has Ever Faced

Villains have encapsulated some of the most iconic characters in cinema history and have made their presence known in every genre. As time has progressed and cinema has evolved, so too has the villain and the qualities that they possess. The trend has now become that to make a great villain, they need to be very complex and layered and somehow relatable to the audience. To put it simply, a villain is, in a movie, the Yang to a hero/heroine’s Yin, a perfect balance.

9) Pik van Cleef (played by Arnold Vosloo) – Hard Target (1993)

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A GOOD action movie will no doubt have a good main villain, but a GREAT action movie will have two main villains! In John Woo’s Hollywood debut, he pits JCVD’s Chance Boudreaux, a former marine,  against a syndicate who hunt homeless vets for sport, led by Lance Henriksen’s Emil Fouchon and our number 9 honouree, Arnold Vosloo’s Pik van Cleef.

Van Cleef basically serves as second in command to Lance Henriksen’s character, but I thought he well and truly deserved a place on this list. Aside from his lack of empathy and complete devoid of any human emotion for that matter, he is a cold and calculating killing machine. He said it himself: “I don’t get angry, I’m a professional.” You get a good couple of glances into his dark soulless eyes courtesy of Woo’s expert close-up camera work, and it serves to be very unsettling. Let me tell you now, it works.

He isn’t menacing in an overt way, but when he flies off the rails, you better believe he flies off the rails. He uses office scissors to cut off an earlobe of one of his associates just to drive a point home, and maybe it was also punishment for being careless in his dealings. And when he and Van Damme finally face off in the film’s final act, it is as epic as you could expect.