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)

Darren McCord (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is divorced and haunted as a Pittsburgh firefighter after failing to save a little girl in a fire. He is reassigned as the fire inspector for the Civic Arena. The Penguins are playing the seventh game in the Stanley Cup finals. Darren has two tickets and takes his kids. Terrorists led by Joshua Foss (Powers Boothe) takes the Vice President hostage and threatens to blow up the stadium at the end of the game for a ransom of over $1 billion.Van Damme tries to do Die Hard. The basic premise is very appealing but there are differences that cause logical problems. An arena has too many entrances and it should be a lot easier to sneak people in. A big event like this should have a ton of security already inside the arena. It would never boil down to one unarmed fire marshal. There's a war outside but the audience inside has no clue. I do remember mobile phones back in the day. It's also very annoying that Van Damme can't seem to pick up any of the guns. It gets too ridiculous when he goes in to play goaltender. I'm sure the pitch was great but it takes more than that to make a good movie.

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.

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.