2020
Action
I dunno if this is supposed to be a remake or reboot or be it an alternate version of Sudden Death, the 1995 Jean-Claude Van Damme film that had a Die-Hard formula, and one that I enjoyed a good deal, but Welcome to Sudden Death wouldn't have been so bad, if the script didn't go down the TV show ABC Family - route. Like many post-1990s low budget action B-films, it has a TV movie/TV show feel going for it; at least with the original Sudden Death, it still felt like a cinematic Hollywood experience under Peter Hyams, who tried to inject some style and suspense into the proceedings, - yet this film was obviously aimed at the VOD audience and with that it becomes a family-friendly film. Whilst the film's plot is identical to the original, with it set in Phoenix, the actual movie was filmed in Canada, it's almost like a race-swap version of the original with a Black family in place of a white family. It gets one additional mark knocked off for not having a mascot fight, just like with the Jean-Claude Van Damme version. Michael Jai White gets by with some brutal kills, but everything else is so watered down, and the villain played by Michael Eckland lacks any sort of nastiness that Powers Boothe had. Sudden Death was daft and silly but also overly decent. Pound for pound it follows the same narrative beats, & it's not terribly bad, but Welcome to Sudden Death is a needless film that just one film was enough.
Is It Worth Watching?
For Michael Jai White fans only
Overall:
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