Product: Black Eagle (1988)
Rating: 2.0
Black Eagle: JCVD on the Rise
In BLACK EAGLE Jean Claude Van Damme had barely begun making a name for himself. He was less well-known than Sho Kosugi, with whom he had to share top billing. The plot is a nonsense actioner between Kosugi as a CIA op and JCVD as his KGB counterpart. What is of interest is Van Damme's interpreation of a Red bad guy. This was not his first appearance as a Russian fighter. In NO RETREAT NO SURRENDER he was Ivan, a Russian mafia enforcer. Here he is Andrei, a KGB operative who is battling Kosugi for a secret weapon. When Van Damme plays the heavy, he is somehow more threatening, more lethal than when he is the punching bag good guy. One of his best moments in this or any of his other actioners occurs when he is not fighting at all. He is seen as merely talking to his wife who is genuinely concerned for his safety. Their verbal interaction marks him as distinctly human as they ponder his looming fate. Further his aggressive fight scenes with Kosugi are first rate. Van Damme's untimely demise with a ship's propeller raises some unexpected sighs of sympathy. BLACK EAGLE is a watchable early slice of a very young JCVD as he proves that given the right script, he can deliver acting on cue with the same verve as one of his patented roundhouse kicks.