Sudden Death (1995) on Netflix
R19951h 51mActionCrimeThriller
Darren McCord, fire marshal at Pittsburgh's Civic Arena, takes his son and daughter to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. Terrorists seize the owner's box, holding the Vice President hostage.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb5.9/1040,067 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes50%
Trailer
Plot summary
After he failed to rescue a girl from a house fire two years earlier, Darren McCord moved from firefighting with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire to the fire marshal's post at the city's Civic Arena. He brings his son Tyler and daughter Emily to the seventh game of the Stanley Cup Final, where the Pittsburgh Penguins meet the Chicago Blackhawks, a birthday outing for Tyler. Joshua Foss leads a group of terrorists who seize the owner's box and take the Vice President and several officials hostage. The arena is rigged with explosives timed to detonate when the game ends, and hundreds of millions of dollars are to be wired into offshore accounts. Secret Service agents and city police surround the building while the game goes on.
Cast
- Steve Aronsonas Dooley
- Michael R. Aubeleas Ace (as Michael Aubele)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sudden Death (1995)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis were all considered for the lead role of fire marshal Darren McCord but turned it down: Schwarzenegger had just shot True Lies and Junior back to back, Stallone disliked the script, and Willis was busy with Die Hard with a Vengeance.
- James Woods was originally considered for the villain Joshua Foss, but turned the part down because he did not like the direction of the character; that same year he acted alongside co-star Powers Boothe in Nixon.
SPOILER
The final helicopter crash was shot with a 400 ft crane that could pick up and lower the helicopter into the arena, recorded by nine cameras over several takes, with hundreds of emergency vehicles on standby in case of an accident.- Footage from the Penguins' October 1 NHL season opener against the Chicago Blackhawks was delayed by the 1994-95 lockout, so an exhibition against the Cleveland Lumberjacks was arranged, and when it lacked intensity a game was staged with the Johnstown Chiefs and Wheeling Thunderbirds.
- The hundreds of emergency vehicles used in the filming were real ambulances and fire apparatus from Pittsburgh's neighboring communities, each licensed through the Pennsylvania Department of Health and fully crewed by emergency medical technicians and paramedics.
- The film's pitch came from Karen Baldwin, wife of Penguins owner and producer Howard Baldwin, who thought the Civic Arena's retractable roof would make a spectacular setting for an action film. The goalie-disguise plot point came from an earlier, unproduced Baldwin story in which the hero uses the ruse to defect from the U.S.S.R.
- To fill the arena, production mixed invited Penguins fans with paid extras, typically 2,000 to 3,000 but up to 10,000 in some scenes, and topped them up with cardboard cutouts, a common technique before CGI enhancing became the norm.
- The 2018 British film Final Score, in which Dave Bautista battles terrorists while a soccer match runs down, is widely considered to have been influenced by Sudden Death.
