Starring:
Luc Robitaille
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Plot Summary: Terrorists threaten America during her most treasured sporting event - the Stanley Cup Finals.
All of the major sports in the United States have had movies glorifying them: Field of Dreams, Hoosiers, and Necessary Roughness are just the archetypal examples. Sadly, there have been few efforts to promote hockey, the bastard child of American sports. During the 1990s expansion of hockey to warm-weather climates that offered large TV markets, non-worthless currency, and a hockey-illiterate local population, Peter Hyams sought to direct the great American hockey movie, starring 600-goal scorer Luc Robitaille and co-starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Peter Hyams gives us Game 7 of a hypothetical Stanley Cup Finals between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Pittsburgh Penguins, the most exciting game in sports. Jean-Claude Van Damme shows his blue-collar work ethic by shoring up the film with a subplot involving terrorists holding the Vice President of the United States hostage in a luxury box. The winning combination of playoff hockey with domestic terrorism made this the best hockey movie of the decade, better than all seven Mighty Ducks films and even better than MVP: Most Valuable Primate.
Jean-Claude is Darren McCord, a shell-shocked firefighter turned fire marshal working the Pittsburgh arena for Game 7. He scores two tickets for his 10 year-old son Tyler and his 8 year-old daughter Emily. Unfortunately he can't get another ticket for his ex-wife or any other adult supervision while he is working during the game. This is probably why he is only allowed to see them on weekends anyway.
The audience is treated to some early pre-game cameos as Jean-Claude takes his kids through the Penguins locker room, sowing the seeds in Tyler of a life-long love of hockey and in Emily of a life-long fear of naked men. His kids meet future Hall of Fame left winger Luc Robitaille and Brett Tolliver, who appears to be a goalie of some kind. Jean-Claude even introduces the children to the head chef, which although lacking in excitement, is also lacking in naked men.
Jean-Claude abandons his children for the three-hour game and goes to work. Meanwhile, the terrorists gain access to the Vice President's luxury box by holding the chef's wife hostage, spilling a lot of unnecessary blood in the process. Cutting back to the game, Pittsburgh draws first blood, with Stevens beating Belfour at the ten-minute mark of the first period. The unsung hero of the movie, real-life Pittsburgh announcer Mike Lange, captures the drama with his trademark call of, "Gramma, the bingo game is ready to roll!"
We return to the terrorist subplot and meet Joshua Foss, portrayed by Powers Boothe of Red Dawn fame. He contacts the Secret Service outside the arena to inform them that if $1.7 billion of frozen assets aren't transferred to his offshore accounts, he will blow up the entire arena. The catch is that one third of the amount has to be moved during each period or he will shoot hostages. This is the best attempt to structure a hostage ransom to parallel a sporting event since Rip Taylor demanded one-eighteenth of a $1 million ransom be delivered during each hole of the Masters at Augusta in the straight-to-video Masters of Evil.
After watching Chicago tie the game at one with two minutes left in the first on a tip-in by Graham, Emily wanders unescorted into the ladies' restroom. Reflecting the fear of every American parent, Emily discovers that someone has killed the mascot and assumed her identity. This is a standard move from the terrorist handbook, which states in the prologue that he who controls the mascot controls the stadium. The evil Penguin mascot takes Emily to the skybox, after which Jean-Claude drops by to figure out where his daughter went.
Jean-Claude finally realizes that Icee the Penguin has been replaced with a lady terrorist when he discovers his daughter's hat by the elevator. They get into a knife fight in the kitchen, where Jean-Claude is threatened with a deli slicer, meat tenderizer, and the deep fryer. The only thing more embarrassing than fighting a woman in a penguin suit is getting beaten up by a woman in a penguin suit. He finally prevails after blinding her with crushed red pepper, proving that Jean-Claude is not some male chauvinist who thinks it's immoral to cheat while fighting a woman.
He goes to report the fight to a security guard who has also been replaced by a terrorist. Apparently they brought a crew of 500 to the arena. The security guard follows him into the kitchen, where he promptly blows his cover. Jean-Claude, now an experienced kitchen fighter, tortures him into providing the exposition.
Meanwhile, the Penguins suffer a complete defensive breakdown, allowing three Blackhawks all alone in front of Tolliver. Jeff Sims scores for Chicago, going up 2-1 with 6:00 left in the second. The terrorists blow up every car in the parking lot to repel an advance by the Secret Service, and the Penguins cycle the puck down low in the offensive zone. A Secret Service helicopter is shot down as it approaches the arena, and Sandstrom ties the game on a nice centering pass from behind the net. In perhaps the most seamless integration of the two plots, a dozen Secret Service infiltrators are sent back dead inside a Zamboni.
Jean-Claude is no ordinary fire marshal, and not in the usual kickboxer/fire marshal way. One of his extra skills is disarming C-4 explosives, which he learned in the Boy Scouts. The other skill is one he learned from watching MacGyver: creating elaborate weapons from random things found in a hockey arena. The lighter fluid/supersoaker flamethrower is outdone only by his power drill bit/plastic tubing blowgun.
In the third period Ron Francis dekes Belfour at the 11:30 mark to put the Penguins up by one. While cutting detonator wires using the time-honored eeny-meeny-miney-moe method, Jean-Claude is interrupted by a terrorist, whom he kills using his blowgun. Sutter scores for Chicago, and the goalie Tolliver leaves the game with a 107° fever. Jean-Claude uses his supersoaker flamethrower to surprise a couple terrorists who just can't believe that they are going to die to such a goofy weapon.
In order to further integrate the subplot with the hockey game, Jean-Claude runs through the crowd to evade some of the fully automatic rifle-toting terrorists, who don't seem to stick out too much in a Pittsburgh hockey crowd. He ducks into the locker room and disguises himself in Tolliver's uniform, coming out just in time to see backup goalie Wregget give up the go-ahead goal to Chicago.
Jean-Claude finds himself out on the ice playing net for the Penguins. He even makes a glove save on a breakaway, but, realizing he needs to stop playing hockey and get back to defusing the numerous C-4 bricks around the arena, he starts a fight with a Blackhawks forward to get ejected. A cynic might find this sequence wacky, incredible, unspeakably retarded even. A true film buff, on the other hand, recognizes this as the natural progression of Cinderella sports movies: first children, then chimpanzees, and in 1995, Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Despite leaving the Penguins shorthanded for the final four minutes, Chicago chokes in borderline New York Rangers quality. Protecting a one-goal lead during the final 10 seconds of the game, the Blackhawks call for a line change, allowing Ron Francis to feed Luc Robitaille on the breakaway, who beats Belfour with 0.3 seconds left. This sends the game into sudden death overtime, ironically enough, just like the title. It is not clear if the terrorists expect more money to be transferred in the extra periods.
At this point I felt that the director sort of loses control of the picture. In trying to give equal time to both arenas of action, he lets the Jean-Claude fighting terrorism subplot take too much of attention away from a very exciting hockey game. I do respect that he is given a very difficult task of doing justice to both with only 110 minutes of film. The game goes into sudden death overtime, but it's completely overshadowed by Jean-Claude running around setting terrorists on fire. And it's the good part of overtime, the first ten minutes, not even the third OT where everybody's too tired to skate and the coaches are out on the ice. I'm not saying that one second of Jean-Claude blowing a drill bit into a terrorist's neck could be cut, but maybe Peter Hyams should have made the film 150 minutes long and done equal justice to the OT period. I patiently await the director's cut on DVD.
At any rate, Jean-Claude mixes some white powder and a couple clear liquids he finds in the trainer's room in a jar and goes to the roof. Clearly he has an elaborate plan, one that involves opening the stadium's retractable roof, jumping onto one of the roof cameras, riding it down the tracks onto one of the hanging lights, swinging towards the luxury box, throwing the jar (which, unexpectedly, is a high-powered explosive) onto the roof of the box, and jumping through the hole to rescue the his daughter and Vice President. He also ends up throwing a terrorist into the scoreboard, shooting sparks in slow motion like The Natural except disgusting.
Unlike football, which cancels a game if there's lightning striking the field, or baseball, which cancels for a light mist, hockey isn't subject to weather. A corpse falling from a hundred feet onto center ice will stop the action, though, Game 7 or no Game 7. As the panicked fans rush towards the exit, Jean-Claude collects his traumatized children. Little Emily recognizes Joshua Foss making his escape, and gets re-kidnapped. This brings to mind the old country saying: "Abduct my daughter and hold her hostage once, shame on you, abduct my daughter and hold her hostage twice, shame on me."
To be fair, Jean-Claude always tries to save his kids from the dangers he exposes them to, and chases Foss up to the roof and his getaway chopper. Foss gets on the ladder and shoots at Emily to distract Jean-Claude, who gallantly takes the bullet in the shoulder. To bring home that crime not only doesn't pay, but inevitably ends in fiery death, he takes aim at the helicopter, and in a shot that would impress James Bond, penetrates the floor of the chopper and kills the pilot. Maybe this was a less than optimal strategy as the helicopter was directly above father and daughter at the time, but luckily it narrowly misses them and crashes on the ice.
This would pose serious problems for the Cup Finals. The Penguins earned home-ice advantage, but Game 7 couldn't be rescheduled for the Civic Arena with the various explosion damage. Presumably, the President announces that there will be no make-up game, rather declaring each team equally good. Pittsburgh will have the Stanley Cup Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; Chicago Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday; with Sundays to be determined by coin flip. Let the healing begin.
I would have to say that this is the greatest movie I have ever seen.
Pittsburgh 4, Chicago 4 (OT)
Chicago 1 1 2 0 - 4
Pittsburgh 1 1 2 0 - 4
Scoring Summary:
First Period - 1. Pittsburgh, Stevens. 2. Chicago, Graham.
Second Period - 3. Chicago, Sims. 4. Pittsburgh, Sandstrom.
Third Period - 5. Pittsburgh, Francis. 6. Chicago, Sutter. 7. Chicago, Nichols. 8. Pittsburgh, Robitaille.
Overtime - No scoring. Game called on account of domestic terrorism.
Goalies - Chicago, Belfour (8 shots - 4 saves). Pittsburgh, Tolliver (6-3), Wregget (1-0), Van Damme (1-1).
