Sudden Death (4K UHD Review)

Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
Review Date: Sep 03, 2024
Format: 4K Ultra HD

Director

Peter Hyams

Release Date(s)

1995 (August 27, 2024)

Studio(s)

Shattered Productions/Universal Pictures (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)

Film/Program Grade: C+
Video Grade: A-
Audio Grade: B+
Extras Grade: C+

Review

When actors who are known for their martial arts prowess become successful action stars, their careers tend to follow a predictable trajectory, at least as far as American cinema is concerned. Their earlier films usually emphasize fighting, but after a while, the fighting ends up becoming secondary to conventional gunplay action. On a long enough timeline, most marital arts stars become shooting stars (so to speak). That’s exactly what happened to both Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal. Whether it’s out of a desire not to be pigeonholed or else simple laziness, the results are the same. (In Seagal’s case, it’s not hard to guess which of the two options is more likely.) Jean-Claude Van Damme looked like he was going to follow the same trajectory, especially after he helped bring John Woo’s patented brand of gun-fu to America with Hard Target in 1993. Yet a funny thing happened on Van Damme’s way to becoming a shooting star: he hooked up with director Peter Hyams.

Hyams was brought in to helm Van Damme’s Hard Target follow-up Timecop, and despite the science-fiction setting and abundance of guns on display, their partnership resulted in what one of my friends at the time referred to as a “good old-fashioned ass-kicking movie.” (Van Damme even managed to find an excuse to perform one of his trademarked splits.) Timecop certainly nailed Van Damme’s core appeal, and unsurprisingly it ended up becoming his biggest box office hit. So, it was perhaps inevitable that the two would work together again, even though Hyams was initially a bit reluctant. The result this time was a strange but fascinating film that manages to fulfill and defy expectations in roughly equal measures: Sudden Death.

Sudden Death was actually the brainchild of Karen Baldwin, who was the wife of Pittsburgh Penguins owner Howard Baldwin. She wanted to make an action movie that involved the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, and after a protracted development process (which is an interesting story all its own), Sudden Death was born. The scenario in the final shooting script by Gene Quintano ended up placing Van Damme at the intersection of a very different trajectory that affected many action stars during that era: their inevitable brush with the “Die Hard on a” subgenre. Steven Seagal had already done Die Hard on a ship with Under Siege, and he followed it up with Die Hard on a train for the sequel Under Siege 2: Dark Territory. Wesley Snipes had Die Hard on a plane with Passenger 57, Keanu Reeves had Die Hard on a Bus with Speed, and so on, and so on, ad nauseum. Yet thanks to Baldwin, Quintano, and Hyams, Van Damme would end up with one of the oddest of the bunch: Die Hard on a... hockey arena?

Superficially, at least, that seems like perfect fodder for Van Damme to exercise his gunplay chops more than his martial arts chops. The “Die Hard on a” subgenre usually doesn’t involve everyman characters, but rather experts in a particular field who are underestimated by both sides of the hostage drama. Yet Van Damme’s character in Sudden Death, Darren McCord, falls a bit more on the everyman side of the spectrum (albeit an everyman who’s inexplicably gifted with his hands and feet). McCord is a former firefighter who lost his nerve after failing to save the life of a small child. He’s now serving as a fire marshal at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, where he decides to bring along his son (Ross Malinger) and his daughter (Whittni Wright) for game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Chicago Blackhawks. Unfortunately for all of them, the Vice President (Raymond J. Barry) is also in attendance, and terrorists led by Joshua Foss (Powers Boothe) roll in to take him hostage. Much one-man-against-the-world shenanigans ensue.

All of the Die Hard pieces are in place, not just in terms of the apparent terrorists with ulterior motives and the fly-in-the ointment opposed to them, but also with the snarky hacker, an agent playing both sides, and a generally incompetent federal response to the situation. (It’s the Secret Service in this case, not the FBI, and while that may have seemed like a bit of a stretch back in 1995, recent events have proven Sudden Death to be surprisingly prescient in that regard.) All that McCord needs to do is acquire guns from the terrorists and take the battle to them—except, that’s not what happens. He doesn’t even pick up a gun until 85 minutes into the film, and then he promptly drops it. It’s not until ten minutes later that he actually gets to fire another one, and it’s more of a plot convenience at that point than anything else.

Hyams seemed far more interested in keeping McCord on his back foot from beginning to end, and fighting for your life feels much more plausible when guns aren’t involved. Die Hard humanized John McClane by counterintuitively dehumanizing him instead, turning him into a walking pin cushion that dripped blood, sweat, and tears at every opportunity. In comparison, McCord is always on the defensive, having to use whatever is at hand to survive every encounter. He still takes a licking and keeps on ticking, but nothing that’s as over-the-top as the damage that McClane endures in any of his misadventures.

That’s not to say that the action in Sudden Death is plausible; far from it. The ending in particular strains credibility to the point of beggaring belief. Yet it’s all grounded by another interesting point of intersectionality in the film: the use of real locations, hockey leagues, and teams. John Frankenheimer had done something similar with Black Sunday back in 1977, producing the film with the full participation of the NFL and Goodyear, and he gained a remarkable level of verisimilitude as a result. That’s hardly the case with Sudden Death, and yet the fact that much of it was shot at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena with real NHL teams, logos, players, and announcers does help keep things as grounded as possible—at least, until they completely jump the shark at the end.

Yet the real anchor for all of the chaos is Jean-Claude Van Damme, along with his talented hands and feet. While gunplay is certainly visceral in its own way, good old-fashioned ass-kicking is visceral on a different level entirely. It’s far more visually appealing, since unlike bullets, you can actually see the punches and kicks as they travel toward their unfortunate recipients. Van Damme has gone back and forth between gunplay and martial arts all throughout his career, but his work with Peter Hyams stands out in the latter regard. Yes, Sudden Death is far more problematic than Timecop was, but it’s still an entertaining look at a relative everyman forced to rely on his wits and his fists rather than on guns and bullets. McCord still has guts, and sometimes, just sometimes, guts is enough.

As usual, Peter Hyams served as his own cinematographer for Sudden Death, shooting it on 35mm film using Panavision Panaflex Platinum and Arriflex 35 III cameras with anamorphic Panavision Primo and E-series lenses, framed at 2.35:1 for its theatrical release. For this version, Universal Pictures has supplied a master based on a 16-Bit 4K scan of the original camera negative. Sudden Death is actually the second Hyams film to be released in 4K after Narrow Margin, although there’s a significant difference this time. Hyams has always favored natural lighting and practical light sources in his cinematography, and he loves shrouding his characters in darkness, so his films wouldn’t necessarily seem like they’d benefit much from a High Dynamic Range grade. Whoever produced the master for Narrow Margin must have thought so, because that one was available in SDR only. Yet Universal has provided both Dolby Vision and HDR10 grades for Sudden Death, making an interesting comparison between the two. Does the Hyams look benefit from HDR?

The answer is a resounding yes. No, this isn’t exactly The Meg, where the highlights are blindingly bright, but the demarcation between the glow of the spotlights around the arena and the darkness behind them is still stronger in HDR than it is in SDR. As a comparison, look at the nighttime sequence in Narrow Margin where James B. Sikking searches for Gene Hackman outside the train, which is lit only by the lights from the train and the station. The contrast in that sequence is much less dramatic than in similar material here. The contrast in general in Sudden Death is much improved, and there’s more depth to the blacks, with no crush where there shouldn’t be any. It’s worth remembering that Hyams isn’t afraid to let shadows just be shadows, so there’s no shadow detail in shots where he didn’t want any. The shot of Powers Boothe talking to one of his associates while the camera tracks up to show them backlit by the arena shows just enough detail in their faces to make it clear who they are, while their bodies and everything around them falls off into complete blackness.

Based on how good that Sudden Death looks in 4K with HDR, it bodes well for future releases of other Peter Hyams films. Here’s hoping that 2010, Outland, The Relic, and others eventually make the leap into the format. (The Relic in particular could really benefit from an HDR grade like this one.)

Audio English 5.1 and 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English subtitles. Sudden Death was released theatrically in 5.1 DTS, and this is a fairly typical mix for that era. It features aggressive directionality, although there’s not much use of split surrounds. There’s a significant amount of kick from the LFE channel from the explosions and even in the checking during the hockey game—when these players hit the boards, they really hit the boards. While there would have been a matrixed 2.0 surround track for theatres that weren’t equipped for digital sound, It’s not clear if this 2.0 track is that theatrical mix, or a fold-down of the 5.1. The fact that the boom effects are missing from the 2.0 makes it possible that it’s just a fold-down where the LFE has been discarded. In any event, Sudden Death was intended to be heard in 5.1, and it’s the clear choice between the two.

Kino Lorber’s 4K Ultra HD release of Sudden Death is a two-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film, as well as a slipcover that duplicates the artwork on the insert. The following extras are included:

DISC ONE: UHD

Audio Commentary by Mike Leeder and Ross Boyask

DISC TWO: BD

Audio Commentary by Mike Leeder and Ross Boyask
Interviews with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Peter Hyams, Powers Boothe, and Ross Malinger (Upscaled SD – 7:26)
Behind-the-Scenes Footage (Upscaled SD – 6:07)
TV Spots (Upscaled SD – 3:22, 6 in all)
Trailer (HD – 2:16)
Hard Target Trailer (HD – 2:05)
The Emerald Forest Trailer (SD – 2:20)
Running Scared Trailer (SD – 1:30)
Narrow Margin Trailer (SD – 2:01)
Blown Away Trailer (SD – 1:35)
The Perfect Weapon Trailer (HD – 1:58)
Face/Off Trailer (HD – 2:07)
Ronin Trailer (HD – 2:29)
2 Days in the Valley Trailer (HD – 3:01)
Turbulence Trailer (SD – 2:00)

The commentary pairs filmmaker/action movie historian Mike Leeder with filmmaker Ross Boyask. They explain how they became Jean-Claude Van Damme fans, and also how they were first introduced to Powers Boothe (like many of us, it was via the 1980 telefilm Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones). They trace the trajectory of Van Damme’s career, as well as those of Peter Hyams—they offer a lot of love for some of his underappreciated films. They also talk about screenwriter Gene Quintano, and detail the many revisions that the script passed through before it finally reached the screen in 1995. It’s a nice track that blends factual information with personal experiences, making it clear that Leeder and Boyask are true fans.

Aside from the trailers, Kino has also included are two vintage featurettes. The first is a collection of interview footage with Van Damme, Hyams, Boothe, and Ross Malinger. It looks like of these were taped on set by the PR crew in order to use as part of the electronic press kit, but if any actual publicity featurettes were ever produced, they haven’t been included here. The Behind-the-Scenes Footage was likely taped by the same crew, and it shows how several sequences were staged and shot, including one high fall and the rather ridiculous helicopter drop. (The smattering of applause at the end of the latter says everything.)

So... is Sudden Death worth the upgrade to 4K? Absolutely. Is Sudden Death in 4K going to change anyone’s mind about the film? Probably not. Hyams and Van Damme still bring enough to the table to make it worth watching, but like nearly any “Die Hard on a” film, it’s not exactly Die Hard. That’s okay, though, because it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes, just sometimes, being derivative is enough.

- Stephen Bjork

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