I've seen a lot of Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies in my time. What's interesting about both actors is their calling cards in their films. In every Dolph film, he's shot in the left arm. It doesn't fail. In every Van Damme movie, he shows off his buttcheeks. Again, it doesn't fail. I think it's very telling.
Wake of Death has DTVC Hall of Famer Jean-Claude Van Damme as a bouncer whose wife and in-laws are murdered by the Triad crime boss whose daughter Van Damme's wife took in after she showed up on a ship of illegal immigrants. In the Wake of that Death, he kills a bunch of other people to get his revenge. Not a bad deal.
This film gave me headache, and I have one man to blame for this: the director. He was so hung up on these MTV music video/car commercial style edits and jump cuts that they made me sick to my stomach. He ruined any of the good bad action in this film. He was like the grandmother who just can't let her daughter take care of her new baby. Someone should've gotten a hold of him and told him to stop, but like the overbearing grandmother, everyone was afraid of the backlash if they said anything.
The director also pulled a bad action no-no: he gave us some sweet action at the very beginning, then shut it down for a half hour of other crap. Considering the movie's 90 minutes long, that's too much inactivity. I think the director was suffering from an over-inflated ego, and he forgot he was doing a paint-by-numbers Van Damme action vehicle.
The action was solid-- what I could see of it. Had this been done by a better director: one who understands his or her audience, this could have rivaled some of Van Damme's early 90s stuff. All right, maybe not that good, but enough to be entertaining. He kicked a lot of ass, shot a lot of people, and blew up his share of cars. It was a solid effort.
This movie also had Tony Schiena, who was in The Merchant of Venice as Leonardo. He's a solid martial artist, but he's underused in this. He gets his ass kicked by Philip Tan at the end, and Tan slices the hell out of him. Luckily Schiena stabs him in the crotch, and that kills Tan. I'm not sure how it works either, but it's the kind of thing that would be hilarious if the director didn't throw all these jump cuts in it.
This film is just not quite worth it. It's not as bad as In Hell, by any stretch, but it's not as good as Desert Heat or Derailed. I'd rent it before you buy it to see if you like it. I thought it was a tad too gruesome to make fun of (between Van Damme's family's slaughter and the dude who gets tortured with a power drill), and it wouldn't be my first choice if I wanted a bad action night with a Van Damme film.
For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367478/
I've revisited this as it's just getting a UK rerelease. I didn't like it then and I still don't. I agree the over editing is the main problem. There's also the downbeat, melancholic tone and a propensity for pretentiousness. The warning signs are all there in the pre-title and opening titles sequences. JCVD gets a good character to play here, but he's underdeveloped. To make up for times when he's not around, they throw in supporting characters but then do nothing with them. (There's a long torture scene not involving JCVD that's intense, but it's just padding.) This has more of a budget than what we usually get these days, so I enjoy the tanker truck sequence and particularly the motorcycle chase through a mall. That was the best part, but again some of the editing ruined it a bit. I loved seeing Arnold Chon turn up and especially Philip Tan. It was impressive that they got Simon Yam as the villain, but he didn't get much to do really. As a Brit, I loved seeing Burt Kwouk turn up - although it's just to get shot. He's a beloved icon here; sadly he passed away in 2016. Regarding the plotting involving the little girl, there seemed to be a lot of plot holes. She seemed to be easily getting away time and again. And why did JCVD even take her to the ship at the climax? JCVD's Ben Archer goes to rescue his son at the end, but his actions almost certainly would have got his son killed. Yam's villain has been shown to be callous, so his restraint made no sense.
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