Sudden Death (film)

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 Whittni Wright Ross Malinger Dorian Harewood
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.
Budget	$35 million
Box office	$64,350,171

Sudden Death is a 1995 American action film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Powers Boothe. The film's story was written by Karen Elise Baldwin, the wife of then-Penguins owner Howard Baldwin. 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. The film was shot during the 1994–95 NHL lockout. The film also was the first appearance of Iceburgh, the Penguins mascot.

Plot

Darren McCord (Van Damme) is a Canadian-born firefighter with the Pittsburgh Fire Bureau who suffered a personal crisis after he was unable to save a young girl from a house fire. Now removed from active duty, Darren is the fire marshal for the Civic Arena. While attending Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Chicago Blackhawks with his daughter Emily and his son Tyler, he discovers a criminal operation occurring in the arena. A group led by former United States government employee Joshua Foss (Boothe) is holding Vice President of the United States Daniel Binder (Barry) and several other VIPs at gunpoint in a luxury suite. 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. Darren must not just stop Foss, but somehow send the game into overtime and save his children simultaneously.

Darren is first pulled into the plot when Emily is kidnapped by a hitwoman disguised as Iceburgh, the Pittsburgh Penguins' mascot. Emily witnesses the woman kill several people, and is spared when the killer runs out of ammunition. She places Emily in the suite with the other hostages. Darren, who had given pursuit, is left to search in vain. Realizing she has been "made", the killer returns to deal with Darren and a long fight breaks out. He proves to be more than a match for the killer. The fire marshal manages to kill the woman by kicking her into a large dishwasher, which pulls on her penguin's head strap and strangles her.

Darren finds a security guard, but this man is a hostile in disguise. He gets the upper hand this time, though, and forces information out of the thug before stabbing him in the neck. Darren 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 Darren stand by while the agents take charge. He angrily refuses, saying that he will handle this himself.

The Secret Service and the Pittsburgh Police team up to surround and cordone off the arena and a standoff ensues. Meanwhile, Darren manages to find a few of the bombs and disable them, whilst Foss goes about killing several hostages. Eventually, Hallmark manages to sneak inside and meet with Darren. It quickly transpires that Hallmark is yet another puppet of Foss's, influenced by money. Darren kills Hallmark and uses Hallmark's phone to contact Foss, who taunts the man with the news that he is holding his daughter captive.

As time quickly ticks down, Darren manages to disable more bombs, but is severely slowed by confrontations with Foss' men. At one point, the fire marshal must pretend to be the Pittsburgh goalie to escape the thugs and ends up successfully defending a shot. The third period runs down, and with the Penguins down by one goal, Luc Robitaille scores the equalizer in the last second, bringing the game to sudden death—prolonging the game, but only until the next goal is made. Darren decides that there's no time left to find the remaining 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 when she recognizes him. They head up towards the top of the arena, where a helicopter is waiting to lift Foss away. Darren intervenes and saves his daughter. As Foss flees, a wounded Darren shoots the pilot through the floor. The pilot falls back taking the joystick with him, stalling out the helicopter. A screaming Foss dies as the copter goes into the arena and explodes on impact with the ice.

As Darren 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 Darren is put inside the ambulance as the film ends.

Cast

• Jean-Claude Van Damme – Darren McCord
• Powers Boothe – Joshua Foss
• Raymond J. Barry – Vice President Binder
• Whittni Wright – Emily McCord
• Ross Malinger – Tyler McCord
• Dorian Harewood – Hallmark
• Brian Hutchison - Young Secret Service Agent

Hockey figures

• Jay Caufield – Tolliver
• Bill Clement – Pre-game announcer
• Cleveland Lumberjacks players - Chicago Blackhawks players
• Ian Moran - Chris Chelios
• Jeff Jimerson – Himself (credited "Anthem Singer")
• Mike Lange – Himself (credited "Play-by-Play Announcer")
• Luc Robitaille – Himself
• Paul Steigerwald – Himself (credited "Color Commentator")
• Markus Näslund – Himself (uncredited)
• Bernie Nicholls – Himself (uncredited)
• Ken Wregget – Himself (uncredited)
• John Barbero - PA Announcer (uncredited)

Reception

The movie received a mixed reaction. Sudden Death currently holds a 52% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Box office

Sudden Death opened in the United States on the weekend of December 22, 1995 in 8th place, making only $4,782,445 at 1681 theatres, with a poor $2,845 per screen average, and meek $20,350,171 final tally. Internationally it fared a little better, with a worldwide gross of nearly $64 million. In other countries, it made close to 50 million in profit with video sales.^{[citation needed]} The film's disappointing box office results may have been related to two elements outside its control: the fact that R-rated action films rarely become hits when released in December, and a film that bucked this trend to become a major hit opened just one week prior, Michael Mann's Heat.

External links

• Sudden Death at the Internet Movie Database
• Sudden Death at AllRovi
• Sudden Death at Rotten Tomatoes
• Pittsburgh Hockey.net Sudden Death (1995) Retrieved October 26, 2011