Black eagle - L'arme absolue

Strange movie this is. It's a typical 80's action movie trying to be a James Bond film (with Van Damme in the Jaws role) with two non-English leads (the heavy accents are all over the place) and it works on no level at all.

The story is plain stupid and could probably be resolved in real life through simple diplomacy or a quick Navy Seals operation. But of course this is one-man operation and boring it is...

Set against the background off Malta only one men can take on a ship full of evil Russians while entertaining his kids on vacation (and I'm not making that up). What surprises me about the man that goes by the codename of Black Eagle is how 1-dimensional his character is considering he has the most screen time and they tried to flesh him out by having his kids around. he stays bland, but then again he has no charisma at all...

Then Van Damme, here having about half the amount of lines Ah-nold had in Terminator he comes off as a baddie we all like. He gets more physics to display, he gets the cool moves, he even is more fleshed out (physical and character-wise) then the good guy. At the end I was just hoping Van Damme would knock his lights out.

Unless you're watching a horror film (allthough this movie is a horror to watch) you're not supposed to root for the bad guy. But I was. I'm thinking they re-shot scenes making van Damme's character more likable after the success of Bloodsport, but it messes the movie up even more....

It's imperative that you approach this film in a mood to be amused by a movie so bad, so clichéd, that it's quite funny. This film is the cinematic equivalent of a quattro formaggio pizza, literally dripping with cheese. Van Damme features very little in the movie and when he does, its in such a banal villain stereotype that one just has to chuckle. His death cry almost sounds like a cry of relief.

And as for the script, it's pure corny laughs throughout...

"The unidentified aircraft has turned out to sea" "Get me the police!"

The police? It's like one of those farcical multiple choice quizzes for imbeciles. An unidentified aircraft is encroaching on your sovereign airspace, do you (A) lock anti-aircraft missiles on the bogey, (B) scramble air force interceptors or (C) call the police. Yeah, police - good call. They've been itching for a chance to use those rocket powered jet skis!

Yes folks, this movie is jammed packed with the best of the worst. Great, grimacing camp fun. Enjoy!

this action movie staring Shô Kosugi and Jean-Claude Van Damme was not all that exciting,but it was watchable enough.there isn't really a lot of action in the movie.Van Damme plays one of the villains here and has two showdowns with Kosugi.both fight scenes are OK,but not thing spectacular and of very short duration.the movie itself wasn't boring,but it wasn't exactly exciting either.it's one of movies where you can take it or leave it.i doubt i would watch again anytime soon.it has a rating of 3.2 here on this site.i would rate it a bit higher than that,as i didn't find it awful,just underwhelming.for me,Black Eagle is a low 5/10

Black Eagle was released a few months after Van Damme became a star with Bloodsport. The film could have made Van Damme a wash up but luckily he didn't. The martial arts chorography in the film is very sloppy and the fight scene between Sho Khogusi and Van Damme is weak. Skip this one.

I picked Black Eagle up in a shop last year because Van Damme was in it and it was cheap. The movie isn`t worth seeing due to the following reasons: 1: Van Damme is barely in it 2: Very little action 3: A poor hero 4: A poor and confusing story

But Van Damme still had some good fight scenes(which is why the movie doesn`t score 0/10 in my book), but the movie isn`t worth seeing.

2/10