The name of the movie is "Black Eagle" but to me it is known as the film where Jean-Claude Van Damme plays the villain and he does a terrific job. Van Damme is better than the hero simply because he's more scary than Shô Kosugi (who plays the heroic main character) and because the hero is too difficult for any audience to relate with.
The story follows clichés after clichés. It is about the old duel between USA and URSS, during the bitter days of Cold War and Van Damme plays a deadly KGB agent working for the bad guys who stolen a powerful device found in a crashed American air force plane. Kosugi plays the agent who needs to track down and rescue this device in order to be the hero of the moment and stay home with his two kids. The whole operation takes place in Malta, a very beautiful place, and there's going to be lots of action and many boring and unimportant dramatic moments.
These unimportant moments drags this film way down considering that this a film starring Van Damme, with many punches and kicking. On the action level there's two or three sequences that really goes well but there are two annoying things: 1) Of every 10 fights performed here 7 features someone having his neck broken. No shooting at all, only broken necks. This become so overwhelmingly lame that it's almost laughable. 2) the soundtrack played through the first half hour, the same tune played over and over again. Nothing against these kind of thing after all Carly Simon used Coming Around Again's tune during so many moments of "Heartburn" and it is a really great soundtrack. But here it was annoying to hit rock bottom.
The major flaw of "Black Eagle" is not having a good plot. Many things are obvious, there's nothing interesting to see. To name one of the bad moments I need to mention are the encounters between Kosugi and Van Damme, where they fight for a second and then the hero escapes. That's right. One can assume two things: He is a total coward or he doesn't wanna hurt the soviet man (perhaps he's even sexually attracted to him). All the three times they've met something happened and he couldn't handle with Van Damme in a great fight.
Van Damme's performance and fights are quite good, if only he had the chance to play the good guy and have a better ending for his character perhaps this movie would be way better. 2/10
The story follows clichés after clichés. It is about the old duel between USA and URSS, during the bitter days of Cold War and Van Damme plays a deadly KGB agent working for the bad guys who stolen a powerful device found in a crashed American air force plane. Kosugi plays the agent who needs to track down and rescue this device in order to be the hero of the moment and stay home with his two kids. The whole operation takes place in Malta, a very beautiful place, and there's going to be lots of action and many boring and unimportant dramatic moments.
These unimportant moments drags this film way down considering that this a film starring Van Damme, with many punches and kicking. On the action level there's two or three sequences that really goes well but there are two annoying things: 1) Of every 10 fights performed here 7 features someone having his neck broken. No shooting at all, only broken necks. This become so overwhelmingly lame that it's almost laughable. 2) the soundtrack played through the first half hour, the same tune played over and over again. Nothing against these kind of thing after all Carly Simon used Coming Around Again's tune during so many moments of "Heartburn" and it is a really great soundtrack. But here it was annoying to hit rock bottom.
The major flaw of "Black Eagle" is not having a good plot. Many things are obvious, there's nothing interesting to see. To name one of the bad moments I need to mention are the encounters between Kosugi and Van Damme, where they fight for a second and then the hero escapes. That's right. One can assume two things: He is a total coward or he doesn't wanna hurt the soviet man (perhaps he's even sexually attracted to him). All the three times they've met something happened and he couldn't handle with Van Damme in a great fight.
Van Damme's performance and fights are quite good, if only he had the chance to play the good guy and have a better ending for his character perhaps this movie would be way better. 2/10