YMMV / Sudden Death

• Complete Monster: Joshua Foss is a corrupt former Secret Service Agent who invades a hockey game's VIP section and takes the Vice-President, his family and other people hostage. Foss plans to have money wired into off-shore bank accounts and blow up the stadium with everyone in it at the game's conclusion to cover his tracks. Foss orders multiple people killed and when his henchwoman Carla brings a child witness back, Foss simply asks why she didn't kill the girl already before having her put with the other hostages to execute them all at once. Foss begins executing hostages and tries to blow up portions of the stadium to show he's serious. When Darren McCord saves the hostages, Foss takes Darren's daughter hostage and after the final battle, opts to use his last bullet on the little girl, saying he wants Darren to live a long life always remembering how he failed to save his daughter.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Fighting a giant bird? Anything familiar about a certain family guy?
  • For playing such a diabolical mastermind of a villain, some viewers wonder if this was the reason why Powers Boothe was cast as Gorilla Grodd in Justice League.
  • Raymond J. Barry plays the Vice President in this film, in another later action film for Universal Studios, Barry would play another political character who happens to be a contrasting Corrupt Politician.
• Love to Hate: Joshua Foss and his henchmen. Despite being cocky, smug and murderous sociopaths, they are curiously charming, while Powers Boothe approaches his performance as Foss the same way he would approach his voice-acting role performance as Gorilla Grodd in Justice League.
• Nightmare Fuel: Some of deaths are a bit scary, like the mook's dying with a bone in his head.
  • Carla is a brute that ruthlessly murdered three stadium employees, absolutely would have murdered a little girl if she hadn't run out of ammo, and stopped at nothing to kill Darren during their fight scene. That doesn't make her blood-curdling screams during her death any less horrifying.
• Padding: The opening scene with losing the girl in the house fire and picking up his kids from his ex-wife could be excised with almost no bearing on the plot at all.
• Poor Man's Substitute: Depending on the shots, it's either the Penguins against one of their farm teams dressed as Blackhawks, or two of the then-East Coast Hockey League (now "ECHL") dressed as the NHL teams.
• Signature Scene: Darren vs the henchwoman in the penguin suit is one of the first things discussed about this film. A still from the fight serves as the current media image for the film.