|
Starring
:
Jean
Claude Van Damme
Simon
Yam
Philip Tan
Valerie Tian
Tony Schiena
Claude Hernandez
Lisa King
Anthony Fridjohn
Action
:
Tom Delmar
Paddy Ellis
Writer
:
Mick Davis
Laurent Fellous
Kristina Hamilton-Grobler
Philippe Martinez
Frank Rehwaldt
Producer
:
Philippe Martinez
Stéphanie Martinez
Stanley Roup
Alan Latham
Director
:
Philippe Martinez
|
WAKE
OF DEATH (2004)
A.K.A.
- After Death
Reviewed
by Phil Mills
Ben
Archer (Van Damme) is a mob enforcer who has seen a fair
amount of action in his time but he has finally decided the
time is right to retire. He loves his family very much
and wants to put the savage lifestyle behind him so that he
can spend more time with his wife and son. However, a
wise man once said that the best laid plans often go to pot
and they couldn't have been more right if they were looking at
Ben Archer's life. When his wife, a social worker, takes
a young Chinese immigrant girl into their home, she doesn't
quite realise she is holding onto the child of Sun Quan (Simon
Yam), one
of the biggest Triad gangsters in Hong Kong. When Quan
comes calling for his daughter he doesn't mess around and
slays everybody in his path including Ben's wife.
Unfortunately for Quan, Ben isn't the type of person to take
these kinds of things lying down and he has only one thought
on his mind - bloody and absolute revenge!
In
cinematic terms, the simple story of a man seeking retribution
for the loss of a loved one is generally a successful one as
it instantly gets the audience cheering for the hero and
provides a quick and easy motif for numerous action
scenes. However, in the case of 'Wake Of Death' there's
something extremely average and lacking about the whole
affair. For one thing, I don't think you ever really
care enough about Van Damme's character to fully empathise
with his situation and the sequences involving his loss just
seem overly dramatic. Added to this, Van Damme never
seems that bothered about his wife's demise (aside from a
couple of hazy romantic flashbacks and a few tears) and he
appears to forget about his true purpose far too quickly. Performances
from the actors are also extremely mundane with Van Damme
doing little more than grimacing for the majority of the film
whilst Simon Yam is once again utterly wasted in an American
production. There are also a couple of graphic sex
scenes thrown in for good measure (yes people, you'll be glad
to hear we do get to see Van Damme's arse yet again) but these
seem very out of place as they serve no particular purpose.
As
far as the action goes, there's one simple word to sum it all
up - brief. Despite the fact that there are a couple of
well presented and put together set-pieces, the majority of it
is far too short lived to ever allow the viewer to fully
appreciate it. This is particularly noticeable in the
fight sequences which generally seem to consist of one formula
- Van Damme punches, bad guy punches and Van Damme floors the
bad guy. It's true that both Van Damme and the stunt
guys do look capable (and show off a couple of decent kicks as
well) but it would have been nice if one of the fights had
lasted longer than two hits. On the positive side, a
couple of the vehicle stunts do exceed expectations, in particular
a very refreshing slant on a motorcycle chase through a
shopping mall but like the rest of the action scenes, it does
seem to come to a very speedy conclusion.
Having
heard so many positive things about 'Wake Of Death', I was
surprised to see that this is really nothing more than a
relatively bland revenge flick. It has a few spurts of
entertaining action and maintains a degree of watchability but
it's nowhere near the standards required to restore Van
Damme's status as an A-list Hollywood star.
Rating:
 
|
