Darren(Jean Claude Van Damme) is a firemen, he carries his sons to a Pittsburgh Penguin national Hockey play-off where is taking place the final.But the arena has been taken by a terrorists led by a cruel villain(Powers Boothe). The bad guys are holding the Vice President(Raymond J. Barry),as well as another authorities taken as hostages in a private box. The chief villain demanding a few billion dollars or he'll blow up the stadium because is wired with enough explosives for killing all around. Meanwhile an Inspector(Dorian Harewood) is also investigating the events and is captured our hero's daughter .

This film is plenty of action and explosions and is quite amusing. Displays suspense, thriller, violence, great action scenes and stunts with sensational scenes. Jean Claude Van Damme gets a perfect part who plays cat-and-mouse- with a sardonic nasty, well played by Powers Boothe.The highlights film are the impressive fighting on the stadium's ceiling. The blowing up ,pyrotechnics,struggles are breathtaking but the picture is just another usual Hollywood product in the wake of ¨Die hard¨.Married only by lack credulity for feats of Van Damme and too many needlessly scenes. It packs a high budget and lavishly produced ,however, nowadays Van Damme performs a middling and low budget movies. Spectacular music score fitting to action film by John Debney(Sin city,Passion of Christ).The motion picture is professionally directed by Peter Hyams who repeats with Jean Claude in ¨Timecop¨ . He's an irregular director with hits(Relic,Outland,Capricorn one) and flops(Sound and thunder,End of days).

Darren McCord, a fire safety officer at a hockey stadium, takes his two kids to a major Pittsburgh Penguins game. It just so happens to be the day that extortionist/thieves kidnap the vice president and hold him hostage at the stadium, thus putting himself and his children in mortal danger.

Lets cut to the chase here, Sudden Death is a clone rip off of Die Hard, the action template movie that shines as bright as a newly formed bruise, but as copycats go {and there have been reams}, Peter Hyams' beefcake blunderbuss movie is an action junkie's delight. Jean Claude Van Damme {McCord obviously}flexes his muscles and not only beats seven bells of tar out of Powers Booth's criminal minions, he also proves to be a hero and loving father to his oblivious children. It's contrived for sure, I mean we get Jean sneaking on to the ice and taking up net minding duties, and it's certainly a script devoid of imagination. But it's got Van Damme fighting a hot kick ass babe in a penguin suit and a last fifteen minutes of high roof/dangling/swinging/exploding mayhem that does the action genre proud.

It's no Die Hard, but what genre films are? Sudden Death in spite of its contrivances, is a film that is impossible not to enjoy if you are a like minded adult. 7/10

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 an ice 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 and creative. 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.