So I saw “the Departed” on Friday. It was amazing. I've casually mentioned in my column and to my constituency that I felt “the Departed” had more pressure on it than any movie in the past six years. It was one of those movies for which you saw the trailer, thought to yourself, “Holy shit, I need to see that,” then saw the commercial at a bar and one of your buddies would say “Holy shit, I need to see that,” and you'd both get real excited.
I bring this up, because I went through the same thing 12 years ago for, you guessed it, today's Lost Classic, the immortal Jean Claude Van Damme vehicle “Sudden Death” (by the way, it's impossible to take any movie seriously when it's described as a vehicle – if Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson made a movie about a 17th-century English vineyard, nobody would describe it as a “vehicle”). Anyway, I saw the trailer for “Sudden Death”, and this is shortly after I saw “Timecop,” which somehow addressed the only things missing from “Back to the Future”, virtual reality sex and a guy getting his arm torn off by a giant wrench. Here's what I knew from the SD trailer: It starred Van Damme, before he was a massive coked-out abusive husband joke. It took place at the seventh game of the Stanley Cup, back when it wasn't crazy to invoke hockey in mainstream America. And it was another in a long line of Die Hard ripoffs and retreads. Just for kicks, it used two real teams, the Penguins and Blackhawks, both of whom are now nearly-bankrupt embarrassments to once-proud franchises. There's no way this could miss. And fortunately for us, it didn't.
Why is “Sudden Death” the best action movie ever to take place at the Stanley Cup Finals? Let me count the ways/
1. Did I mention real players? Luc Robitaille scores the game-tying goal with a few seconds to spare. Ken Wregget comes in after Van Damme causes an on-ice brawl (more on that in a bit). Bernie Nichols. Chris Chelios. Ed Belfour. Yes, these were real people. I love it when sports movies get the licensing rights to real teams and players. Take “Any Given Sunday,” which involved one guy taking steroids and one guy playing for a bonus despite the fact he could get killed if he gets another concussion. Naturally the NFL wouldn't allow them licensing rights and that's why we had those lame Miami Sharks uniforms. But what the hell? Sudden Death was about 17,000 people who could get blown up for attending a hockey game, and Gary Bettman didn't seem to mind.
2. Van Damme's kids. I know it's wrong to pick on children, but sweet Christ these kids are terrible actors. You expect a certain level of comedy for a Van Damme flick, like his mortally hysterical speech in “Street Fighter” Youtubed here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=cg02trDIhqM
But these kids, woof. They blow. You've got the goddamned son who knows sign language and takes the words “Don't move” way too seriously. But he's a cold beer on a hot Christmas morning compared to the daughter, who is so fucking obnoxious you root for her to get killed immediately after the whole Coke-Sprite scene, right before her brother busts out his Super Soaker…and speaking of the Super Soaker…
3. Cool deaths. “Sudden Death” has a guy getting stabbed in the throat with a chicken bone, a lady in a giant Penguins costume run through a meat grinder, and another guy being set on fire by a Super Soaker filled with gasoline. (God, I loved Super Soakers. Which one had the giant backpack? 500? 750? A buddy of mine had one, it was like getting shot with a fire hose.) Anyway, that's a cool job, coming up with violent deaths for goofy action movies, and the Sudden Death guys did it about as well as anyone. Naturally, they don't get nominated for an Oscar. So then why have the Oscars?
4. Powers Boothe. Great movies need great villains and this guy was a prick. I like how his lighter looks just like a bomb detonator. Do they sell that shit at some kind of Super Villain Novelty store? I'll take the ballpoint pen that looks like a machete, please.
5. The completely unnecessary opener. Basically, it's Van Damme as a firefighter who can't save a kid from a burning house. Apparently this crippled him emotionally both in his profession (he now changes light bulbs in the Civic Arena) and his home life (his wife left him not long after). I think it's important to have these establishing emotional scenes for a character to later jam a chicken bone into a guy's neck.
6. The broadcast guys. They used the real Pittsburgh announcers for the movie, Mike Lange and Paul Stiegerwald. Doesn't sound like much to non-hockey fans, but how great is it to hear him bust out “Scratch my back with a hacksaw” during a fight scene? Did your precious “Die Hard” have that?
7. The brawl scene. Wait until you hear this. Here's the setup, Van Damme is being chased by a tiny white dude and a fat Polynesian guy. He ducks out through the locker room, eventually stealing the clothes of concussed Penguins goalie Mike Tolliver (made-up name by the way, I have no idea where Tom Barrasso was). Anyway, Van Damme ends up on the ice, robs Bernie Nichols on a breakaway and decides to punch another Blackhawk in the face, inciting a brawl.
Again, I mention, not even an Oscar nomination for this movie. What a travesty.