Sudden Death

(1995, US, Universal Pictures)

Dir. Peter Hyams; Pro. Howard Baldwin, Moshe Diamant; Scr. Gene Quintano; Cast Jean-Claude Van Damme, Powers Boothe, Raymond J. Barry, Whittni Wright, Ross Malinger.

111 min.

Timecop director Peter Hyams tackles a second big budget Van Damme vehicle with a similarly light touch, setting Die Hard at an ice hockey stadium and putting the action star through his paces as an indestructible firefighter. A secret service nutjob (Boothe, channeling Alan Rickman) and his team of terrorists hijack the Stanley Cup final, strapping bombs to the building and holding the vice president and his entourage hostage. Van Damme’s a divorced fire warden with tickets to the big game, taking his kids along only for his daughter to be nabbed by the crooks. Van Damme goes rogue and before too long he’s diffusing bombs and manufacturing crude homemade weapons with stuff he finds lying about the place. There are quite a few really silly moments (particularly at the end when the film loses its mind), but by far the silliest moment is the fight with a giant penguin mascot.

Under Siege

(1992, France/US, Canal+/Warner Bros.)

Dir. Andrew Davis; Pro. Arnon Milchan, Steven Reuther, Steven Seagal; Scr. J.F. Lawton; Action Dir. Steven Seagal; Cast Steven Seagal, Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Busey, Erika Eleniak, Patrick O’Neal, Damian Chapa, Troy Evans.

102 min.

Seagal’s most popular film is a stocky, ham fisted, cliché ridden macho fest of the highest order, and probably the pinnacle of his bone-busting career, which speaks volumes. As great action movies go, this is up there with your Commando‘s and your Die Hard‘s, but that may be because this is essentially just Die Hard on a boat.

Not just any boat, mind. We’re on board the iconic USS Missouri battleship, location for the Japanese surrender which ultimately ended the Second World War. On its final voyage, the entertainment – a country band led by Tommy Lee Jones on full lunatic mode – whip out heavy rounds of artillery and shoot their way into the control room, holding the crew hostage and locking the ship’s missiles onto Honolulu, for some reason.

But they don’t bank on the ship’s chef – ex-Navy SEAL Casey Ryback (Seagal, complete with trademark ponytail). Demoted due to his renegade antics (“Sometimes you gotta question authority”), he can still manufacture highly dangerous explosives from little more than a condom and some string.

Ryback is considered a threat by the terrorists and chucked into a fridge, only for him to fight his way out and stay incognito long enough to free a rabble of plucky hostages and sort them into a crack team of resistance fighters. This includes a buxom stripper (Eleniak, from Baywatch) who successfully meets the film’s chauvinistic quota of both nudity and dumbness.

Director Andrew Davis would hone his more political muscles a year later on The Fugitive, but thankfully he lets Seagal’s muscles take centre stage here. It’s a perfect vehicle for the actor’s steely wisdom, violent chops and limited vocabulary. Endearingly, he takes the film quite seriously, especially compared to Jones and Gary Busey who both seem to be having a great time.

Like the best and most dated action films, the line between being so-bad-it’s-good and genuinely exciting is a blurry one. But it’s bullshit at its best, and Seagal has been chasing this dream ever since.

Death Dimension

(1978, US, Spectacular Film Productions)

Dir. Al Adamson; Pro. Harry Hope; Scr. Harry Hope; Cast Jim Kelly, Harold Sakata, George Lazenby, Terry Moore, Aldo Ray.

90 min.

Perhaps if Jim Kelly hadn’t taken so many bad decisions then maybe his action movie career may have progressed further into the 1980s and the era of the big guns. Kelly certainly had the right attitude, the good looks and the martial arts skills to make him a big star. If he had successfully avoided no brain turkeys like this one, then maybe his story would have been very different indeed.

As usual he makes the best out of a bad situation, playing a police detective alongside a Bruce Lee wannabe who travels to Los Angeles to bring to justice a heartless pimp called The Pig (played by Odd Job) who plans to sell a weather control device to terrorists, or something. The instructions for the device are bizarrely kept on a microchip embedded in the head of its creator’s student, who is kidnapped by the bad guy in an attempt to prompt a lashing from Kelly’s kung fu chops.

Adamson directs with all the excitement of a hernia. He drives this laborious chore at such an incredibly slow pace it is no wonder why so many of the cast are falling asleep. And quite what George Lazenby is doing in this is anybody’s guess.

Available in all bargain bins.

AKA: Black Eliminator; Freeze Bomb; Icy Death; The Kill Factor

Command Performance

(2009, US, Nu Image/Millennium Films)

Dir. Dolph Lundgren; Pro. Danny Lerner, Les Weldon; Scr. Steve Latshaw, Dolph Lundgren; Action Dir. Barry Evans; Cast Dolph Lundgren, Melissa Molinaro, Hristo Shopov, Dave Legeno, Clement von Franckenstein.

93 min.

A Lundgren vanity project disguised as an action film and designed as an exercise in showcasing his drumming abilities. The incongruous premise sees Lundgren as the drummer in a rock band who uses his maiming skills to take down Soviet terrorists who hold the Russian President hostage at a charity gig. There are equal measures of violence and music but far less acting.

Derailed

(2002, US, Millennium Films/777 Films Corporation/Halt Productions/Nu Image Films)

Dir. Bob Misiorowski; Pro. Boaz Davidson, Danny Lerner, David Varod; Scr. Jace Anderson, Adam Gierasch; Cast Jean-Claude Van Damme, Tomas Arana, Laura Harring, Susan Gibney, Lucy Jenner.

89 min.

Secret agent Van Damme accompanies a femme fatale thief and part time trapeze artist smuggling chemical weapons onto an unfeasible large train from Bratislava to Munich. Hoods hijack the train holding the passengers hostage, including Van Damme’s family who ill-advisedly decide to show up. With Van Damme on board, the terrorists are kicked and pummeled into submission during increasingly chaotic set pieces which highlight some very poor green screen effects and incomprehensible editing. It’s a depressing notion to find a film attempting to emulate Under Siege 2 and failing.

Second in Command

(2006, US/Romania, Motion Picture Corporation of America/Castel Film Romania/Clubdeal)

Dir. Simon Fellows; Pro. Brad Krevoy, Donald Kushner, Pierre Spengler; Scr. Jonathan Bowers, David L. Corley, Jayson Rothwell; Action Dir. Ben Schwagrowski; Cast Jean-Claude Van Damme, Julie Cox, Alan McKenna, William Tapley, Razaaq Adoti.

92 min.

One of Van Damme‘s straight to video shit storms, this one plays like an episode of 24 and looks like one too. He’s an ex-Navy SEAL military attache (nicknamed Bodycount) sent to Moldavia to protect the President from a revolutionary militia who attack the US embassy lobbing rocket propelled grenades through the windows. With the embassy on lock down, Van Damme must protect the Moldavian head of state from constant assassination attempts, coordinate the rescue of the hostages, tackle conflicting orders from commanding officers and the Secretary of State, take down the terrorists and protect his reporter girlfriend. He even squeezes a few high kicks into the film as part of a box-ticking exercise to provide the sort of routine references his fans expect. The kindest thing to say about the film is that it never gets too boring.

The Shepherd: Border Patrol

(2008, US, Sony Pictures/Stage 6 Films)

Dir. Isaac Florentine; Pro. Moshe Diamant, Gilbert Dumontet; Scr. Joe Gayton, Cade Courtley; Action Dir. J.J. Perry; Cast Jean-Claude Van Damme, Stephen Lord, Natalie J. Robb, Gary McDonald, Daniel Perrone.

95 min.

Now here’s a pretty terrible title for a Van Damme film. He stalks this one with the resigned look of a guy who has already made this movie a dozen times before. The cheap, straight to video feel makes it seem like the filmmakers haven’t watched a film for at least 15 years. Luckily Van Damme made JCVD after this, causing a career renaissance which would have seemed all but impossible at this stage in his career.

He plays a despondent New Orleans cop who joins the New Mexico border patrol to take on the drug cartels, with a ball-busting sergeant and a pet rabbit for company. The main culprits are a disillusioned troop of army-trained US mercenaries who use their Afghan contacts to control the shipment of heroin into the country. They’re bomb nuts and have experience dealing with jihadists, but you’ll find more political clout on a cereal box than you will here.

Undisputed II director Florentine sparks life into the fight scenes with great attention to stunt work and flashy kicks, particularly from Scott Adkins, whose anticipated fight with Van Damme at the end is the only excitement in a rather tired final act.

Invisible Target

(2007, HK, Universe Films/Sil-Metropole Organisation/Guangzhou Ying Ming Media Co.)

Dir. Benny Chan Muk-sing; Pro. Benny Chan Muk-sing, Daniel Siu-ming; Scr. Benny Chan Muk-sing, Ling Chi-man, Melody Lui Si-lam; Action Dir. Nicky Li Chung-chi; Cast Nicholas Tse Ting-fung, Shawn Yue Man-lok, Jaycee Chan Cho-ming, Jacky Wu Jing, Mark Cheng Ho-nam, Andy On Chi-kit, Dominic Lam Ka-wah.

130 min.

Ballistic Benny Chan cop movie which contrives to showcase a trio of hot HK talent: Nicholas Tse, Shawn Yue and Jaycee Chan, son of Jackie, in his first meaty role. Jackie Chan‘s shadow looms large over the film, as long time collaborator Benny Chan fashions out a slick, contemporary and overly long action film in keeping with his previous Chan actioners (New Police Story, Robin-B-Hood) with slight moments of charm which don’t go unnoticed. Much of this resides with Jaycee who looks remarkably like his father in a baby-faced role as a young rookie traffic cop administering justice the professional way. He lives a solitary, somewhat nerdy life with an endearing grandmother who casts whimsical aspersions towards his sexuality, becoming embroiled in a terrorist plot when his missing brother is rumoured to have ties with the bad guys.

Nicholas Tse is the brooding rogue officer who prefers his law enforcement with a bit more brio. A withdrawn Shawn Yue is nursing the effects of a murdered fiance who was blown to bobbins whilst shopping for engagement rings during a Heat-style standoff between the crooks and police at a bank raid. The three form a Wizard of Oz-esque trinity seeking redemption in a cliche ridden nest of subplots, bonding via a big knife fight at a Chinese arcade before dressing each other’s wounds back at Jaycee’s place.

They are targeted by the menacing Wu Jing and his stylish gang of renegade mercenaries, aided by bent cops in the HK police force, none of which you haven’t seen a million times before. But Benny Chan’s organic approach to the pugilism brings an old fashioned excitement, even if the more obvious uses of wires remove from the film’s realism. Jaycee doesn’t fight much but he’s a convincing screen presence, and the movie manages to remind viewers just why Hong Kong is still very good at producing this kind of mayhem.

Olympus Has Fallen

(2013, US, Millennium Films/Nu Image Films/West Coast Film Partners)

Dir. Antoine Fuqua; Pro. Gerard Butler, Ed Cathell II, Mark Gill, Alan Siegel; Scr. Creighton Rothenberger, Katrin Benedikt; Action Dir. J.J. Perry; Cast Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Finley Jacobsen, Dylan McDermott, Rick Yune, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Melissa Leo.

120 min.

A North Korean contingent of rogue, highly militarised terrorists smash fighter jets into the Washington Monument and storm the White House, trapping the President (Eckhart) and most of his senior staff in the underground bunker to issue their demands. Led by young sadist Krang (Yune) – who for a hater of the west has an impeccable grasp of the English language – the terrorists demand interim Pres’ Morgan Freeman to remove US troops from the Korean demilitarised zone and threaten to detonate American nukes across the country.

So with the world going to shit, thank our lucky stars that ex-Secret Service one man army Mike Banning (Butler) managed to sneak into the hallowed halls, opening a communication line with the outside world (like in Die Hard), securing firearms to stylishly pick off some bad guys (like in Die Hard), and rescue the hostages (like in Die Hard). He’s even negotiating a tricky romance and hiding from a tarnished past. Like in Die Hard.

“He will move mountains or die trying,” says the head of the Secret Service, and even though Banning doesn’t actually move a mountain, by the end of this movie you would think it’s the sort of thing he does for breakfast. Absolutely nothing stops him, and the gratuitous crashes, bangs and wallops are all a foregone conclusion. Also, the film’s jingoism is nauseating and there’s not a single original idea in it. It is also full of its own self-importance despite being utterly disposable.

The Spy Next Door

(2010, US, Relativity Media)

Dir. Brian Levant; Pro. Robert Simonds; Scr. Jonathan Bernstein, James Greer, Gregory Poirier; Cast Jackie Chan, Amber Valletta, Madeline Carroll, Will Shadley, Billy Ray Cyrus.

94 min.

Innocuous family fun, an homage to American spy shows from the 1960s like Get Smart and similar to the sort of insipid knockabout comedies you find in the children’s section of DVD stores. In a way it is also a tribute to Jackie Chan himself (the movie opens with clips from his earlier action films), which is odd considering the film’s universal audience. Only experienced, hardened Chan fans would consider going anywhere near this. The target market will doubtlessly be left perplexed as to the significance of casting an aging Chinese man in the lead role.

Chan doesn’t seem too distressed at having Beethoven director Brian Levant round the edges of his trademark action scenes to cartoonish levels, particularly now age has taken its toll on the actor approaching his sixth decade. But Chan is incredibly likeable and never gives less than everything, even to his most half-baked of projects.

He plays Bob Ho, a boring paint supplier enjoying a twilight romance with his divorced neighbour Gillian (Valletta), struggling to win over the affections of her three troublesome children. But Bob isn’t really a paint supplier. He’s actually a cool Chinese super spy with an arsenal of gadgets recruited by the CIA to tackle an idiot insurgence of Russian terrorists looking to infiltrate America’s precious oil reserves. His double life unravels when he volunteers to babysit the children for a few weeks. “I’ve brought down dictators, how hard can three kids be?”

Good natured slapstick ensues, and the story is affecting enough to tug on the heartstrings despite the most predictable of set ups.

AKA: Double Mission; Kung Fu Nanny