The Film (3/5)

When pretending to be a critic, you have to pay attention to intention. You’ve got to review the film in front of you, not the film you WISH it was. With Black Eagle, you want the film to be… not what it is.

What you WANT Black Eagle to be is Sho Kosugi murdering evil ‘80s Russians with an endless supply of shuriken delivered by trusty whip pan – y’know, the kind where, when the camera stops, the guy’s HOLDING the ninja star in place, his hand and chest/face/eye socket covered with way-too-red tempera paint blood seemingly pilfered from the set of Suspiria, screaming through gritted teeth as he sinks to one knee and then finally drops out of frame? We all know what that looks like. You want bloody foot fist battles of spy-vs-spy-vs-splits between Kosugi and his quarry, Spetnaz specialist Jean Claude Van Damme – and you maybe want Van Damme’s character to see the error of his ways, defecting to our side (like his buddy Dolph Lundgren did in Joseph Zito’s ludicrous lobbyist-produced Red Scorpion) so that he and Sho can show the Soviets what their insides look like while paving the road to perestroika red. Sho’s gotta’ put on his awesome ninja helmet with the shuriken on his forehead… he has to “Ninja Vanish” while stealing secret documents (or maybe microfilm)… has to scale a building using climbing claws – and he and JCVD have got to make with so much kicking; there are expectations formed when you see the key art for this film on a video store shelf.

What Black Eagle IS… is a tale of international intrigue with real-world roots about an F-111 Aardvark fighter jet that splashes down in the Mediterranean. The jet is equipped with a bleeding-edge experimental laser guidance system that our government cannot allow to fall into the wrong hands, so the C.I.A. sends their best agent – Ken Tani, the Black Eagle (Sho Kosugi, looking more C.P.A. than C.I.A.) - into Malta in a beat-the-Soviets scenario. The problem is that the Russians – led by Col. Klimenko (Vladimir Skomarovsky) and his “heavy” Andrei (Van Damme) - have already reached the beach and removed one of our assets from play. They know we know they know – and they’re ahead of the game.

On top of this, the Company has Ken’s kids (real-life Sho scions Shane and Kane Kosugi) brought to Malta as leverage (before receiving the Malta mission, Ken was on his way to some much needed quality time with his boys), forcing him to juggle protecting his kids with obtaining the guidance system while dodging the Russians, a scenario that won’t work forever.

It’s not that this setup isn’t ripe for tension – and the film sometimes delivers on that front – but by and large, it’s a too-dry affair, and a lot of what could go wrong for the characters to craft tension simply doesn’t. For example, despite the fact that Van Damme’s Andrei makes a play to abduct Sho’s children, the boys are out of danger inside of an afternoon. They’re never truly imperiled, and their inclusion is never really played as a nefarious ploy by the C.I.A. to coerce Ken into doing their dirtywork – in point of fact, their attaché Patricia (Doran Clark – who was one of the Lizzies in The Warriors!) is concerned, capable, and utterly-on-the-level. She gets a great moment where she dispatches one of her captors with icy remorselessness, framed for inclusion on the One Perfect Shot Twitter feed. It’s a kickass move in a film with not enough of them.

Skomarovsky’s Klimenko isn’t a flamboyant enough villain for the film we want to see – but he does completely acceptable work as a functionary here. He’s not trying for Bond movie villainy, he’s playing things as real-world as possible – which is exactly what the tone of this tale demands. It’s actually hard to find fault with anyone’s performance in the film, really. Van Damme is far less stilted and undercranked here than he was in the comical No Retreat, No Surrender, and placing him in the background of every scene aboard the Russian ship or in the streets of Malta grants him a bit of understated menace, while Kosugi is allowed to play with a more varied palette than usual. He looks like a dad because he IS a dad – but despite this, he’s afforded the opportunity to cut a slick tuxedo-clad silhouette during the standard-issue spy movie casino sequence, and he even gets to do a little comedy during a nice bit of seafaring subterfuge played on Team U.S.S.R.

The film is not without its risible moments; the film’s inciting aerial incident is depicted via muffled radio chatter (a few seconds of the dialogue is actually obscured by the film’s score) rather than through stock footage or model work, there’s some abrupt editing, at least one model explosion that is outclassed by most Godzilla films, and Van Damme’s ultimate fate has been a source of… let’s say… “consternation” since the films earliest reviews – but for the most part, Karson delivers a thoroughly competent affair on a shoestring budget.

Audio/Video (4/5)

Karson’s film has a sort-of John Glen-directed Bond vibe to it, and MVD’s blu is a really great representation of the film’s look. I feel like Black Eagle has been released 327 times on VHS and DVD, and it’s always been full-frame and soft and gray, but here there’s detail even in the darkness, and it doesn’t look as though the film has suffered any digital tinkering. There were some moments where color wavered, but this could very possibly be owed to lighting conditions during production, as there is a lot of exterior location shooting. I imagine cloud cover and shooting on the ocean were nightmarish for a little production like this.

Extras (5/5)

In the bountiful making-of segments new to MVD’s release, screenwriter Michael Gonzales explains that his first draft played like a proto-Bourne film – and it’s not hard to see that intent in the we got, but Black Eagle is a low-budget affair, and it’s saddled with Sho’s brood - who were admittedly a worth-the-price-of-admission portion of Pray for Death, but who’re content to just kinda’ hang out here, reducing the steely female lead to not much more than a babysitter (actress Clark says exactly that in the retrospective, but adds that both children were sweet-natured on set). Director Karson is intelligent and honest in his musings about the film, and I love that he’s got a poster for Albert Pyun’s Nemesis hanging on the wall in his office (he’s one of the producers). The featurettes include interviews with pretty much every key participant not from Belgium, and are an interesting look at the idiosyncrasies of low-budget filmmaking during a certain era – and the idiosyncrasies of one of that eras biggest stars.

One of the extras on the disc is an extended cut. It’s about ten minutes longer than the theatrical version, and while there are a few interesting new moments (mostly with Sho’s kids), it’s arguable that they slow the narrative down a bit, which can be murder when you’re a scrappy little b-movie.

Oh – there’s a cute little poster replica packed into the case. It’s a charming addition to the set. MVD wants you to collect them all!
 

Overall

Do I wish a film with the legendary Sho Kosugi and an up-and-coming Jean Claude Van Damme was brimming with more ‘80s video boom-verve? Indeed I do. Do I wish it was packed with more martial artistry? Without a doubt. But to Eric Karson’s credit, he endeavored to make a tense Cold War thriller with a maguffin right out of the headlines of the day, and his vision is not without its worthwhile elements. MVD has crafted a great package in support of the film, making it an easy recommend for fans of the picture or its principal cast.