The U.S. film streaming service Netflix has released a trailer for the upcoming action comedy “The Last Mercenary,” its first movie shot in Ukraine.
The trailer was published on June 8.
Starring the action genre legend Jean-Claude Van Damme, the film will become available for Netflix users on July 30.
The project joins a growing number of international films, music videos and commercials shot in Ukraine, as the country is earning a name of a popular production destination.
“The Last Mercenary” is a French-language film that follows a former secret service agent who is forced to return to France when the government accuses his son of drug and arms trafficking.
The trailer promises an entertaining action-packed film mixed with humor. There are car chases, group fights and shootouts. “Terminator-style,” as one of the characters summarizes.
The film was shot in Kyiv and Paris in the summer of 2020. Back then, Belgian actor and former martial artist Van Damme met up with Ukraine’s Culture and Information Policy Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko. The Ukrainian part of the shooting was produced by the local Apple Tree Vision film studio.
Directed by French filmmaker David Charhon, the movie aims to revive “the great tradition of action films of the ’80s and ’90s.”
“Those cult films we all love where the heroes were out of the ordinary, the stunts were all more impressive and truer than life, and all punctuated with humor,” Charhon told Variety.
This is Van Damme’s first collaboration with Netflix and his first comedic role in a feature film in a stunning acting career with nearly 60 movies in his filmography.
“’The Last Mercenary’ is an incredibly exciting project and allows me to take on a new genre,” Van Damme said. “I’ve always been a fan of Jean-Paul Belmondo, and I hope to take up the torch of action comedy in my own way.”
