By Geno McGahee
In 1988, DIE HARD was released and it was one of the best and most popular action films of all time. This didn’t go without notice. Capitalizing on the success, other action stars gave their version of DIE HARD to the fans and most of them were pretty good, including UNDER SIEGE with Steven Seagal and the 1995 SUDDEN DEATH with Jean-Claude Van Damme.
In 1995, Van Damme was delivering some good hits like TIMECOP (1994), UNIVERSAL SOLDIER (1992), DOUBLE IMPACT (1991) and DEATH WARRANT (1990). It made all the sense in the world to give Van Damme a chance to tap into the DIE HARD magic and we got SUDDEN DEATH, a film that isn’t remembered as fondly as DIE HARD or even UNDER SIEGE, but damn, what fun I had watching this movie.
Darren McCord (Van Damme) is a fireman that has some demons that he’s dealing with. While on the job, a young girl died and it has destroyed his life. It led to his divorce and the loss of his career. The only thing that is keeping him going is his two children, Emily (Whittni Wright) and Tyler (Ross Malinger). Unfortunately, the relationship with his ex isn’t good and he doesn’t plan well, showing up randomly with two tickets to a hockey game. Initially reluctant, his wife allows him to take them to the game where he has a security/fire sort of detail.
Joshua Foss (Powers Boothe) is a terrorist and has surrounded himself with a bunch of henchmen that have zero character development. This is where the movie isn’t DIE HARD. Foss is awesome, but the other characters that back him up with the exception of one that I’ll go into, is just there to die. The first half of this film is a very second rate version of DIE HARD, but if you hang in there, it gets far better and then becomes tremendously awesome at the end.
Of course, this is a cash grab with the plan to kill everyone at the game and only Van Damme can stop it. I did notice that Van Damme was very skinny in this. I’m not sure what the deal was, but he was far smaller than he’s been in other films, but it didn’t matter as he carried himself well and was still kicking ass with believability. This film was also pretty creative at times, especially with the fight scenes. At one time, Van Damme fights off a terrorist woman dressed in a penguin suit, eventually killing her with an industrial dishwasher. I used to wash dishes when I was 13 with nearly the same dishwasher. I was very lucky not to die operating that thing.
Got some spoilers coming up… so read at your own risk. I am also referring to Van Damme’s character as “Van Damme”. I can’t help it. How can it be wrong, when it feels so right?
Hallmark (Dorian Harewood) wasn’t interested in Christmas movies (Bad Joke, I know) was in the FBI and decided to enter the arena to stop the terrorists, BUT much like DIE HARD 2, he’s with the bad guys and plans to help Foss take down Van Damme and get the large amount of money transferred to his bank. When he reveals his bad intentions to Van Damme, we get an awesome scene. Van Damme sprays him with gasoline in a water gun and lights him on fire and right when you think he’s dead, he pops up again, totally burnt up and gets killed then. You’d think that Hallmark would be in so much pain from such burns that fighting would be the last thing on his mind. Then again, if he saw himself in a mirror and said “fuck, they’re gonna call me Freddy Krueger now”, I’m guessing he’d be ape shit crazy mad. Whatever the case, he was really really mad.
We get some really cool scenes with Van Damme fighting goons on top of the dome and knocking them off. It was hilarious to hear them scream as they fall down. Despite the lack of character development, I give props when they are due. Having the guy scream like that made me think that he probably had some likes and dislikes such as pottery. Now, his character is developed and I can let it go. He liked making pots and killing people for money. Good enough.
Van Damme kicks everyone’s ass and finally gets to Foss, but he escapes before he can kill the guy. Foss then puts on one of the worst disguises I’ve ever seen, unless he was going for the 1970’s porn star look. The battle continues to the top of the dome and Van Damme’s daughter hangs on desperately not trying to fall to the ice as her dad and Foss fight it out. A getaway helicopter shows up and drops a ladder and Foss grabs on and manically laughs as he says he’s going to shoot the girl and let Van Damme live with it. There is not enough maniacal laughter in films.
Jumping in front of the bullet, Van Damme saves his daughter and then grabs onto the ladder of the helicopter and shoots upward, killing the pilot, leading to one of the best death scenes in film history. The helicopter plummets to the ice and they keep going back to Foss screaming from different angles. This moment convinced me to buy this film. It was tremendous and I tip my hat to the director and to Boothe for his performance. Right when you think they’re not going to show him scream again, bam! Another scream. I watched until the end credits hoping that they’d show him scream again. No dice, but it didn’t take away from my overall enjoyment.
The plan was to give this film a 7/10 as an average action film, BUT that last freaking scene sold me and I had to push it because I challenge ANYONE to pick a better death scene of a villain in any action film. SUDDEN DEATH may have not had the best screenplay or character development, BUT they made up for it and more with the ending death scene. BRAVO.
