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..."The Company Men" is to people over, perhaps, the age of 40. The movie gets the details right about what it's like to suffer through unemployment when your white collar skills aren't going to help you anymore.

"The Company Men" gets the details right. The useless "out training" sessions, the huddling over a computer and a phone at the employment centre. The not being able to go home, because...what will the neighbours think? The hair dye for competing for jobs with 22-year-olds with masters degrees. It's there and it feels real. A younger colleague of mine said she found the film predictable. As drama, perhaps it is a bit. Everything does seem to get tied up in a bow in the end, but does it really? Isn't the finale, though certainly delivering a positive message, as uncertain as the rest of what has gone before?

Unlike many of his action "contemporaries" (uh, you know who) Van Damme has at least been trying to improve himself as an actor with his direct to video films, while working with better directors. Many have been attempts at something different, like the somewhat surreal "in Hell". This is applaud able, but who really wants a Van Damme movie with little or no action? The Shepherd is a throwback to his 90's films where plot was minimal and fights and other action scenes took centre stage, where everyone knew they were making a pot boiler and had fun doing it. And thank God, because while no biggie plot wise, this movie delivers everything you'd want from a Van Damme movie. Great if happily familiar martial art fights (it even opens in that old action movie stand by, a diner)lots of guns and explosions, and even a torture scene for our boy. It's also well directed, starting with a great sense of humor then turning dead serious when it needs to. The last 15 minutes or so are wall to wall boom boom.

For pure action, for what Van Damme does best, this is absolutely his most entertaining film since he went DTV.