Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

adonis98-743-186503 A former fireman takes on a group of terrorists holding the Vice President and others hostage during the seventh game of the NHL Stanley Cup finals. Sudden Death is another classic and well made 90's Jean Claude Van Damme film that not only it benefits from his charisma but also from the late Powers Boothe as the main villain who is kinda the Die Hard type of villain and pretty good to be perfectly honest. The action hits the roof and the movie definitely keeps you entertained and at the edge of your seat and in the end? It's a big blast.. (10/10)

Leofwine_draca What could have been another routine DIE HARD rip-off, along the lines of the similar but atrocious thriller BLAST, turns out to be a supremely entertaining slice of action, delivered with just the right pace by experienced director Peter Hyams. In fact this is one of the better Van Damme films I've seen so far, with excellent fight scenes and an involving, if clichéd, plot. The story is nothing new, it's basically just DIE HARD relocated to a hockey match. Much like UNDER SIEGE was DIE HARD relocated on a boat, and CON AIR was DIE HARD relocated on a plane. But as the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and the formula works. It works very well in fact, which is why these sort of films are my favourite actioners. Van Damme runs around corridors, doing heroic things like defusing bombs, while the baddies shoot people. That's the main thrust of the story anyway, little aided by stupid dialogue and clichéd locations and fight scenes. However, it is perhaps the fight and chase scenes which make this film so engaging.Firstly, the fights are all bordering on the absurd, with Van Damme taking on a person in a penguin suit at the beginning. Virtually all of the bad guys in this film die bizarre deaths, one guy has a chicken bone shoved through his neck, another guy is ignited with lighter fluid from a water pistol, yet another guy has his hand drilled and some other unfortunate soul is processed through a bottle filling machine. These are the kind of death scenes I love in action films, where the villain dies in a horrible way, and there is no cutting away from the moment either. This film revels in the violence. The acting is all on the sub standard side, as to be expected, but to be fair, the cast all perform adequately. The kids aren't too annoying, and Powers Boothe is a smooth if unrealistic villain, whose motivations aren't really thought out or explained in the film. He does a great Alan Rickman impression though.Van Damme is his typical single-expressioned self, but that persona is fine for this role, and he performs brilliantly in the fight scenes as usual. His makeup is good, too. The baddies are all typical heavy types, like we've seen in these films billions of times before. There must be a special acting school for 'generic stock villains' somewhere in America. The shootouts and explosions are all handled well, and the special effects technicians deserve credit, apart from some shoddy digital effects which prove to be highly unrealistic. The editing is spot on, too, the viewer always knows what's happening and when, but the scenes are all served up in an interesting way. Basically this film is for fans of the genre, who know what they're going to get. You just need to sit back, switch off your brain to ignore the many plot discrepancies, and enjoy the increasingly contrived situations that Van Damme is in (he even gets to play hockey at one point!). I love it.

bh_tafe3 Die Hard told an engaging story about thieves robbing a building who found out they had an uncontained hostage who happened to be a cop. Under Siege told the story of a bunch of mercenaries who took over a boat only to find out one of their hostages was a cook who used to be a navy seal. In Sudden Death we have a group of (?) guys who hold an ice hockey rink hostage (the crowd and players are oblivious) only to find out that one of the uncontained people there is a maintenance man (good idea) who used to be a fireman (what?). A fireman who knows martial arts and is a decent hockey goalie (OK, has possibilities).So the story here is that a bunch of mercs, led by an awesome Powers Boothe psychopath, take the vice president, who is sitting in the VIP box watching Game 7 of the Stanley Cup (Pittsburgh hosting Chicago if anyone's interested), hostage and threaten to kill one hostage at the end of every period if they don't get the money they're demanding.Van Damme's daughter sees the mascot being shot by one of the mercs and so she is taken hostage, and Van Damme goes on the warpath, kicking ass, fighting on top of the retractable dome on the top of the building, impersonating goalies, knocking out referees and praying the game goes to Sudden Death to give him more time. If nothing else, the crowd saw a heck of a Hockey game!This really isn't a bad movie, and Van Damme is OK in it. Powers Boothe is a brilliant villain, in the class of Alan Rickman or Tommy Lee Jones in the films this one is aspiring to be. There is so much in here that works, But, for some reason, it's just less fun than it should be. Van Damme did a really good job of playing a miscast hero in JCVD later in his career, but here while he's certainly not bad, he's just not as charismatic as Bruce Willis, and he lacks the inexplicable quality Steven Segal has to just get away with doing next to nothing.The script seems to use all its good lines on Boothe (meaning he probably adlibbed a lot) and doesn't have anything much left for anyone else. The kid actors are quite annoying. A lot of the action sequences are contrived, but they still work. The soundtrack is pretty bad, just over emphasizes the big moments which don't really need it. And I thought the ending was a bit weak. In spite of what I've said here, I quite like this. It's not as good as Die Hard or Under Siege, but it is a solid action movie. Probably Van Damme's best outing as a pure action hero. Check it out.

badfeelinganger Reuniting Hyams and Van Damme, director and star of Timecop, this spectacular nail-biter exploits their combined, if limited, abilities to the full.Steven Seagal had Under Siege, Wesley Snipes had Passenger 57 and Kurt Russell had Executive Decision, then it was Van Damme's second collaboration with director Peter Hyams that resulted in arguably his most accessible and mainstream movie to date. It's a classic 'everyman versus terrorists' scenario, but executed with aplomb and filled with a great sense of scale (helped in no small part by Hyams' skill as a director of photography) and memorable moments.Van Damme is at his butt-kicking best, with Sudden Death offering all the thrills, spills and stuff blowing up that action fans relish. Offers above-average pyrotechnics, a body count that steadily mounts, and plenty of hand-to-hand combat. The best of the many Die Hard rip-offs made during the 1990s. Sudden Death is a thrilling roller-coaster ride of hard-edged action. Fun Die Hard knockoff that uses the stadium for all its worth. The mascot fight is a highlight.A mildly satisfying high-energy romp complete with outstanding professional hockey footage and intense physical confrontations.