We Don't Talk Nearly Enough About How Wild The Plot From "Sudden Death" Was
As you may recall, Gritty is currently under investigation for allegedly punching a 13-year-old in the head. Personally, I think Gritty should be able to counter sue here for defamation of character. I mean there are countless 13-year-olds in the greater Philadelphia area right now who would love to get punched by Gritty, and also some 27-year-old bloggers as well. So either this incident didn't actually happen the way the father is telling the story or somehow they are the only people on the planet who would go into any sort of interaction with Gritty and not expect it to take a turn to violence. Either way, the incident reminded me of one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history. This scene comes from the 1995 box office mega hit "Sudden Death" starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, who portrays the character Darren McCord, a fire marshall at the Pittsburgh Penguins arena who heroically saves the Vice President of the United States and everybody else in Pittsburgh Civic Arena as he foils a terrorist's plan to blow up the building. And in the process of saving the Vice President and his daughter (there's so much going on in this movie), he has to fight a lady terrorist dressed in Iceburgh's costume to the death.
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Oh and by the way, Jean-Claude Van Damme's character is a French Canadian who used to play goalie for a semi-pro team in Canada. He also used to be a firefighter but is now more of a security guard after he wasn't able to save a girl from a burning building, and now his son thinks he's a pussy for not being a real firefighter anymore. Again, there are so many different stories going on in this movie, which makes it jam packed with non-stop action.
But yeah. I mean that scene where Jean-Claude Van Damme is fighting Iceburgh to the death is iconic. It's a masterpiece. As far as fight scenes in movies go, this is one of the top 2 of all time and it sure as shit ain't #2. All the praise in the world aside, though, I just want to take a moment to mention that we don't talk nearly enough about how wild the plot to this entire movie is. I mean the Iceburgh fight scene is only the tip of the iceberg (get it?).
For starters, we have a group of terrorists taking the Vice President hostage in the owner's suite at game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. What was the plan going to be if there was a sweep? Or if Chicago won in 6? Oh and by the way, the Vice President is a big hockey fan so that's why he was there in the first place. Seems like an incredibly involved and highly orchestrated plan that they were able to put together on such short notice. But that's neither here nor there, and we can just suspend disbelief for long enough to accept the fact these guys were able to plant like 15 bombs in the arena and kidnap the Vice President all within like a couple of hours. Then as this entire situation is playing out, the FBI is outside trying to assess the situation while everybody in the arena has no idea what's going on. The head FBI guy is named Hallmark. Guess what--Hallmark is actually working with the terrorists. Surprise surprise, mother fuckers. Bet you never saw that coming. So now not only does Jean-Claude Van Damme need to kick all of these terrorists' ass, but he needs to kick Hallmark's ass as well.
Clearly the numbers are stacked against him. It's Jean-Claude Van Damme vs a bunch of terrorists and also an FBI agent. He needs to start getting creative on how to save the day before he ends up getting a bullet in his brain delivered by one of the terrorists. So in order to escape a couple of goons who are chasing him down, Jean-Claude Van Damme goes into Pittsburgh's locker room where he finds the Penguins' starting goalie who had just left the game in the 3rd period because he had a fever. Game 7 of the Final and this pussy leaves the game because of a fever. What a joke. But either way, JCVD takes his pads and then gets out on the ice. And you'll never guess what happens next....
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This fucking legend makes the SAVE OF THE YEAR to keep the Penguins alive. Granted, it was just a routine glove save but everybody lost their damn minds over it. Remember--JCVD's character used to be a goalie in a semi-pro league in Canada, so he knows a thing or two about stacking the pads. And now here he is making a massive save in game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final, all while he needs to save the Vice President and his daughter who also got kidnapped by the terrorists. The reason she got kidnapped is because she stormed off after her brother spilled her Sprite, and then somehow ran into the lady terrorist in the Iceburgh costume and just got snatched up. Pretty wild series of events there, but that's what makes Sudden Death such an incredible journey.
So Jean-Claude Van Damme keeps on beating the shit out of terrorists and he's diffusing most of the bombs. But the game is almost over and the whole building is going to explode if he doesn't hurry up. Lucky for JCVD, he gets a little help from Luc Robitaille who scores with 0.1 second left on the clock to send this game to sudden death overtime. Get it? Sudden Death? Like the name of the movie!
In overtime, Jean-Claude Van Damme kicks a few more asses up on the roof and eventually one of his fights ends up dropping back down onto the scoreboard. The scoreboard then explodes and everybody starts freaking out and stampeding out of the arena. He does a bunch of cool shit to get himself into the owner's box, saves the Vice President, saves his daughter, finds his son who was just sitting in his seat the whole fucking movie, and eventually crashes the bad guy's getaway helicopter and it explodes on the ice. JCVD saves the day, just like he always does. And oh yeah, one of the first few scenes of the movie shows Jean-Claude Van Damme picking up his kids from his ex-wife and her new husband. Clearly there's some tension going on in that relationship. Do you think we got any sort of resolution to that by the end of the movie? Of course not. They never even mentioned it again. The movie just ends with Jean-Claude Van Damme getting driven off in an ambulance as his kids are still in the parking lot talking about how big of a bad ass he is. An abrupt ending to say the least, but I guess that always opens the door for a Sudden Death 2.
What an incredible film. I'm on the edge of my seat right now just reading that recap, and that doesn't even begin to do the movie any real justice. I simply can't believe we don't talk about this movie more.