@digital*ghost wrote:And also exceptionally vain, apparently.
When Ringo Lam (one of my favourite directors of all time, at least for his HK ventures, RIP
) worked with him on Maximum Risk, he said the end product was nothing like what it was supposed to be, because JCVD [allegedly] forced a lot of re-editing to include more shots and closeups of himself, lol. John Woo said the same thing (apparently, working on a JCVD film was a rite of passage for HK directors wanting to break into Hollywood).
I didn't know about the vanity example!
Admittedly he was a beautiful man to look at during Maximum Risk... but as I re-watch one particular fight scene (the elevator scene), JCVD's character doesn't exhibit high-level grappling skills or transfer of weight/balance... which I am sure JCVD must have actually possessed. If JCVD forced some of the changes - e.g., some of the grimaces and close-ups in that elevator scene - he didn't do himself any favours for those who know and appreciate true martial arts.
What a pity...
For the most exquisitely and perfect technical judo I've ever seen (and which is more exciting to me than the MR elevator scene), Kyuzo Mifune. Nothing more need be said.
I can see quite a choice of his OOP book "The Canon of Judo" available on eBay... Expensive, though. Its availability is not limited to eBay. I have a PDF version but there is absolutely no beating having the actual printed book in my own hands.
(I find it a great deal easier to assimilate data or information in a hard copy textbook rather than pages on a screen. It means that my must-get list costs me dearly, but the plus side is the utter pleasure of reading from the books themselves.
That Mifune video took me down a YouTube rabbit hole for a while 
Hollywood action choreography was always a bit lacking (JMHO, at least until the Matrix hit big, which utilised Yuen Woo Ping, an absolute legend, to choreograph their fight scenes) so that wasn't necessarily a JCVD-exclusive problem I think. In HK movies, the fight scenes, the styles chosen for each character, props used (if any), right down to each move, says something more about the character and story, and they had masters of those fighting styles doing it all - whereas in Hollywood, the focus was often on just what looks cool (or, in some cases, sounded cool on paper ).
Things have gotten a lot better in recent years, though (currently rewatching the Daredevil series on Netflix, wasn't perfect but still seriously well done and the fight choregoraphy was A grade, in that each move and method is an aspect of the characters and heightens the story, not purely a machismo display, lol).
