Sudden Death (film)

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Sudden Death
Directed by Peter Hyams
Produced by Howard Baldwin
Moshe Diamant
Written by Karen Elise Baldwin (story)
Gene Quintano (screenplay)
Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme
Powers Boothe
Raymond J. Barry
Music by John Debney
Cinematography Peter Hyams
Editing by Steven Kemper
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date(s) December 22, 1995
Running time 110 min.
IMDb profile

Sudden Death is a 1995 action movie, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. It also features Dorian Harewood and Raymond J. Barry, and is directed by Peter Hyams. It has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Contents

[edit] Taglines

  • Action goes into overtime.
  • Terror goes into overtime.
  • Some games you can't afford to lose. (from the novel)
  • They said Game 7 would be a war. They didn't know the half of it. (from the novel)

[edit] Plot

Darren McCord (Van Damme) is a Canadian-born former firefighter who was disgraced a couple years earlier when he was unable to save a little girl from a house fire. While attending Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals with his daughter Emily and his son Tyler, to the dismay of his ex-wife, he discovers that everyone inside the Civic Arena is being held hostage by a group led by Joshua Foss (Boothe, whose character's name is never mentioned), a former United States government employee who is holding Vice President of the United States Daniel Binder (Barry) and several others at gunpoint. McCord's daughter is eventually kidnapped and placed with these hostages. Foss has the arena wired with explosives, and plans to blow it up at the end of the game while having hundreds of millions of dollars wired into several off-shore accounts. McCord must not just stop Foss, but somehow send the game into overtime and save his children simultaneously.

McCord is first pulled into the plot when Emily is kidnapped by a hitwoman disguised as Iceburgh, the Pittsburgh Penguins' mascot. Emily sees the woman kill several people, and when her gun runs out of ammo the woman puts Emily with the other hostages. McCord, who had given pursuit but lost his quarry at the private elevator to the owner's box, is left to search in vain. The hitwoman returns to deal with McCord and a long fistfight breaks out. The woman is more than a match for McCord, who is severely beaten but manages to kill the woman by kicking her into a large dishwasher, which pulls on her penguin's head strap and strangles her.

McCord goes and finds a security guard, but this man is in disguise. McCord easily gets the upper hand this time, though, and forces information out of the thug before stabbing him in the neck with a chicken bone. McCord heads up to the executive offices and finds a mobile phone, with which he calls the police. They put him in touch with Secret Service Agent Matthew Hallmark (Harewood), who advises that McCord stand by while the agents take charge. McCord angrily refuses, saying that he will handle this himself.

The Secret Service and their assisting police officers make several attempts to storm the arena, with various degrees of failure. Meanwhile, McCord manages to find a few of the bombs and disable them, whilst Foss goes about killing a couple of hostages. Eventually Hallmark manages to sneak inside and meet with McCord. It quickly transpires that Hallmark is yet another puppet of Foss', influenced by money. McCord dispatches Hallmark and uses his phone to contact Foss, who taunts McCord with the power he has over Emily.

As time quickly ticks down, McCord manages to disable a few bombs, but is severely slowed by confrontations with Foss' men. At one point, McCord must pretend to be a goalie for the Penguins to escape the thugs and ends up successfully defending a shot. Third period quickly runs out, but the Penguins, who up to this point have been losing by one point, pull off a tie-making goal in the last few seconds, bringing the game to sudden death. McCord decides that there's no time left to find the bombs and climbs up to the roof of the arena. He advances upon the owner's box from above and forces his way in, rescuing Emily and the remaining hostages.

Foss manages to escape and blend in with the chaos that has ensued by a thug falling through the score display earlier and blowing it up. Foss sets off one of the bombs, flooding part of the arena, and recaptures Emily. They head up towards the top of the arena, where a helicopter is waiting to lift Foss away. McCord intervenes and saves his daughter, then brings the helicopter down. It explodes in a fiery mass in the arena.

As McCord is being led to a waiting ambulance, his son and daughter comment to the paramedics about how their father is a hero, while Tyler had before told Emily that their father was too scared to be a fireman again. A contented McCord is put inside the ambulance as the film ends.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Critical & box office reception

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Sudden Death opened in the United States on the weekend of December 22, 1995 in 8th place, making only $4,782,445 at 1681 theaters,with a poor $2,845 per screen average, and meek $20,350,171 final tally. In other countries, it made close to 50 million in profit with video sales. Most have cited its domestic failure due to its ill-timed release date in the crowded field of Christmas blockbusters.

Mainstream critics wrote Sudden Death off as a second-rate Die Hard rip-off with no good action scenes and plenty of unintentional comedy to go along with. Still other critics have called it the "best" of the Die Hard styled movies. Pittsburgh residents and Penguins fans alternately love and hate the film.

[edit] External links