Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Wizard-8 After being in "Timecop", which did respectful business at the box office, it looked like Jean-Claude Van Damme was on his way to being a major superstar. But the next year, when he did "Sudden Death", his popularity at the box office started to decline. While the movie was not an outright flop at the box office, it did perform below expectations. It may have been that the action genre itself was starting to lose popularity at the North American box office. It also may have been that the "Die Hard" genre - which this movie rips off - was starting to be old hat. But the movie itself has some faults that may explain why audiences weren't eager to see it. Van Damme's character is pretty thin, from us not learning too much about him to the fact that he hardly appears in the first half hour. There are also some continuity gaps and key happenings that are not properly explained. Also, the movie has a nasty streak that rears its head a number of times during the film, which may have turned off even, ahem, die hard action fans.Despite problems such as those, the movie does have some positive attributes. It looks great, with expert cinematography by Peter Hyams (who also directed) and top notch production values, including some great old school special effects. There aren't any boring spots, and some scenes do have some genuine excitement. This doesn't beat the original "Die Hard", of course, but if you are REALLY wanting to see this formula again, this particular take is better than a lot of others.

Maziun *SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS"Sudden death" is another one of those "Die hard" clones . Some of them were good ,some were bad. Unfortunately this one falls into the second category. I don't mind the lack of originality. However the plot is so ludicrous it was almost doomed to fail even as a brainless action movie. According to writer Randy Feldman, he wrote the first draft of the screenplay for the movie as a comedy / action movie parody. The movie was later rewritten as a serious action movie. That fact itself should be a warning for the viewer… The only scene that remained in the finished film was the scene with the penguin mascot (one of the most laughable scenes I have ever seen). A disgraced 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. The screenplay is so stupid that kills any possible tension. • Why the filmmakers decided to make the hostage the Vice President of USA ? Why not have the terrorist attack the President of USA ? • Why the terrorists would choose a Stanley Cup final to carry out their operation ? • Furthermore , If you were planning an elaborate almost military criminal operation, why choose a Game 7 ? Why not Game 5 or 6 ? • Vice President is in attendance and the security is tight. Yet JCVD seems to go where he wants with no visible ID. He even wanders around the arena defusing bombs, no-one stops him aside from the occasional bad guy who tries to kill him. • It also seems that the bad guys had no problems planting bombs all over the arena and nobody from the security noticed them. • Access to the elevator is controlled by the Head Chef... Furthermore the security guys are too dumb to check the newcomers for hidden guns or bombs. Secret service agents have rarely been so incompetent. • The story at the beginning with the little girl dying in JCVD arms had NOTHING to do with the rest of the movie. It would make sense if JCVD for example was afraid of fire or failure and had to fight his fear at some point of movie (think "Cliffhanger" and the opening scene). • I can somewhat buy the fact that an ex-fireman knows something about explosives , but it doesn't explain how does he knows martial arts so good. If he was a cop that would make sense , but an ex-fireman ? • Why the audience inside the hockey stadium is oblivious to the situation despite many explosions around them ? • Why the bad guy in mascot costume didn't simply kill JCVD daughter ? Why he brought it out to Foss ? He could kill her and hide the body somewhere , it's a big stadion overall. • The girls in women's bathroom didn't noticed the death body ? • Why despite many explosions outside the stadium there are NO journalists , media , TV reporters etc etc ? Nobody saw them or nobody thinks there interesting ? • Who exactly Foss is ? It's never really explained. • Why didn't the black FBI agent (the traitor) simply killed JCVD instead of playing games with him ? • The twist with Foss waiting for the end of extra time (Sudden death) to kill all the people in the stadium is just laughable. • I have never seen people move in such an orderly and polite fashion where they are allegedly in fear for their lives.Some unbelievable moments : Nobody in a hockey mascot costume can see too much or move too fast, so they definitely can't fight. The fact that JCVD almost loses the fight is pure comedy gold . Also, a helicopter's lift is always in a direction nearly parallel to the rotor axis, so it cannot come close to maintaining a position where its nose is straight up. In such a position it would move violently sideways (the rotor leading) and fall rapidly. Oh , JCVD ends up on the ice as the goalie at one point, making a key save !The little kids are terribly annoying. The acting is substandard . Powers Booth overacts his terribly underwritten role. The characters are poorly written and paper-thin.Nobody is really interesting or likable. The action isn't completely unimaginative , yet the stupidity of plot simply destroys any excitement. Not too much of karate here , some might find it disappointing. With stupid plot , lack of martial art sequences and interesting villains this movie doesn't have much to offer. I have to admit that "SD" has decent budget , special effects and is nicely directed. Some of the jokes and dialogues are actually very funny. It doesn't change the fact that I recommend it only to die-hard fans of JCVD and hockey. I give it 3/10.

david-sarkies Right from the beginning I could see that this movie was going to be a Die Hard clone, which is not surprising because Die Hard was a very successful movie and created a trend that followed on behind it. The action in the movie was good but the plot seriously sucked. Basically there were so many holes in the plot that it created a movie that you only go and see for Van Damme, and I don't think that he is that great anyway. If you are wanting to see Van Damme's moves, then this is not the movie to see them in. In fact, if you simply want to see good fighting, hire out a Hong Kong video - there generally tends to be much better moves in them.The vice president is going to the Ice Hockey finals and some guy, the movie really never actually explains who he is, only that he knows the government security operations very well, holds him hostage so that he can force the president to remove money from frozen bank accounts. The problem is that they grab a nosey little girl who turns out to be Van Damme's daughter, and that brings him into it.Van Damme's character is a fireman who quit after a girl died in his arms. Now, the thing that annoyed me is that they showed this part, and it really had nothing to do with the movie. It could have just as easily been explained afterwards than to show it. I think that it would have been much better for the plot line if they spent some time describing who Foss, the antagonist, was. They dropped hints but they never actually went as far as outlining everything. Some might say that it is not important because this is an action movie, but I think it is. It makes for a very poor movie to simply disregard plot for action.Sudden Death is a better Van Damme movie and I enjoyed it. All but this stupid sporting commentator in the booth, but then this is what you expect from commentators. I generally do not watch sports because first I find them boring, but mostly because the commentators are prone to say the stupidest things. These guys tried to make themselves look tough, when they really just didn't think about what they were saying. Actually, it was even worse because it was scripted.I liked it, and I am sure Van Damme fanatics would love it. Personally I would rather go back to the original Die Hard. That is a finely crafted movie.

jonathanruano Back in his heyday, martial arts sensation Jean Claude Van Damme was fighting titans like Chong Li (Bolo Yeung) and Attila. But in this movie, JCVD (playing Darren McCord) is reduced to fighting a hockey team's mascot (which looks like a cross between a hen and a penguin) -- and worst of all he comes very close to losing. And that fight scene really sums up this entire movie. Jean Claude Van Damme was in his element when he was playing unapologetically macho guys in movies that were so cheesy, so laid back, and so consciously silly that they were funny and fun to watch. In addition, some of Van Damme's martial arts fight scenes in those laid back, silly films were brilliant in terms of their execution. But in director Peter Hyams' "Sudden Death," all of that cheesy, laid back, silliness that made the JCVD movies so entertaining was lost in a barrage of loud and remarkably boring shoot em ups, explosions, and stunts. Plus the martial arts fights in this movie are few and far between and nothing compared to the wonderful martial arts sequences in JCVD films like "Bloodsport," "Kickboxer," and even (shockingly enough) "Black Eagle."As for the plot, I will not go into all the details about why this movie is awful because there is simply not enough room in this review for that. Suffice it to say, there are two main problems. To begin with, the lead villain (who is so boring that I honestly forgot his name) explains right in the beginning that he will shoot people if $500 million of U.S. government money is not delivered into his bank account by the end of a (get this) period in a hockey game. Hockey, for those who do not follow the sport, has three periods, which leads one to conclude that the villain wants $1.5 billion in all. This scene, where the lead villain explains his plan, sucks out most of this film's excitement and suspense because predictably enough when the first and second periods of the hockey game end, people die violent deaths in scenes that are identical to each other. If that is not bad enough, this film tacks on a ridiculous plot twist at the end of the third period. Apparently the hockey teams are drawn 4-4 and go into sudden death, which inexplicably influences the lead villain to postpone his original plan to kill everyone in the hockey stadium (which he says he will do if all the money is not delivered by the end of the third period) to the end of "sudden death," giving Van Damme just enough time to save the dumb hockey fans. Maybe I could have excused this flawed plot, if the villains were given interesting things to say and do. But the villains in "Sudden Death" are very dull fellows and not frightening at all. As a result, we are not concerned about their potential victims and we are not entertained by the villains. So my advice is to have fun reading this review, have a few laughs, and be glad that you missed this film.