Black Eagle (1988)

Truly Dreadful Film

Really Surprised!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Granted, this is not a great movie by any measure. Its plot, acting and direction are enjoyable but not really memorable.And I'm no expert in martial arts movies, so I can't review Sho Kosugi and Jean-Claude Van Damme fighting performances in this flick.But I nevertheless find it to be an entertaining and refreshing movie because:a) It is slow-paced compared to movies churned out by Hollywood nowadays. I can't stand shaky cam photography nor "frantic" editing. I find 1980s pop-corn flicks quite relaxing.b) It is full of nice sights of Malta, a location you very rarely see in motion pictures. Its fortifications, distinctive architecture, sunny beaches, beautiful landscapes... It's quite refreshing to enjoy the beauties of an oft-overlooked location in movie-making. Malta is the real star of this picture.c) Doran Clark. She's a beautiful woman and quite convincing as the CIA agent "babysitting" the two kids. Why we haven't seen her in more movies is beyond me.All in all, this flick is a guilty pleasure, but for good reasons.

this action movie staring Shô Kosugi and Jean-Claude Van Damme was not all that exciting,but it was watchable enough.there isn't really a lot of action in the movie.Van Damme plays one of the villains here and has two showdowns with Kosugi.both fight scenes are OK,but not thing spectacular and of very short duration.the movie itself wasn't boring,but it wasn't exactly exciting either.it's one of movies where you can take it or leave it.i doubt i would watch again anytime soon.it has a rating of 3.2 here on this site.i would rate it a bit higher than that,as i didn't find it awful,just underwhelming.for me,Black Eagle is a low 5/10

To my thinking this movie is an excellent action drama. Dark unfriendly atmosphere, very realistic stunts, and a tragic hero (a KGB agent operating far from home) are essential ingredients of this movie.One main character (KGB agent Andrei) is sad, cruel, and taciturn. Another one (American spy of Japanese origin Ken Tani) is attentive, cruel, and a perfect family man. There are no extremely high jumps and over-the-top gore. But there is style. Everything is to the point. These two enemies (they look like two animals destined to fight each other to death) are not talking to each other, they are not trying to bargain, they show little, if any, emotion. It's all about the system, the corrupt government and military that made these two the deadly foes.Please also pay attention to the priest character in this movie. One day he is preaching and the other one he kills people, making it with righteous expression of his phony face. He cannot properly fight being no match for the Russian agent and at the end cowardly shots the agent in the leg that results in death of the latter. Sho Kosugi's character is also not a hero: in the beginning of the film he teams up with the basmatch unit (with Bin Laden cutthroats, in other words) and kills young, supposedly very poorly trained, Soviet soldiers from the cover (what an example of unsurpassed courage!) and later on when the things during the hand-to-hand combat against the Russian man get tough, he jumps off the cliff into the water, i.e. wets his pants figuratively and literally.Van Damme's character, on the other hand, is the real bad-ass hero in this one. He never retreats. He is just like a bad-tempered killing machine. His close-ups during the fits of anger are simply brilliant (remember the one when his henchmen get cheated?). He serves his State till the last drop of his blood (unlike Ken Tani, who is not even a genuine American, who is persuaded to take part in the mission by trick, and who is thinking more about his children's safety and his own ass than about the task). He even sacrifices his own personal life (having such a beauty at hand)! Something that looks absolutely out of place in modern world.Anyhow, this movie is not for fun and pure entertainment, it is not for children either. It is a thought-provoking action film. Thoughts on the following topics can emerge: children, family values, relationship with women, loyalty, killing "for the State", etc. Besides it does not contain any stupid sex scenes, which you encounter in many other flicks of the 1980s (even "The Terminator" made this mistake).Beautiful action scenes: Jean-Claude Van Damme throwing knives on a boat and fighting with Sho Kosugi one on one without weapons. Some viewers recall the car chase scene but to me it is not a highlight. Suppose, you cannot film a very energetic car chase scene on the island of Malta.If you are accustomed to over-the-top combat on screen with flashy blows and lots of bullets in the air and cannot digest a down-to-earth action drama with scanty karate combat without wires, forget about watching this one. This movie was once on the IMDb bottom list, which speaks a lot. Probably you will be bored to death during watching if you give it a try. As to me, actually cannot name any segment of this flick that falls flat.The vote for such realistic, sad, and memorable movie from my side is a 10 out of 10. Overestimation? Maybe. But this movie works simply great on all levels - that's my view. Thank you for attention.

This movie looked really cool on the DVD-cover. In addition, this is in 1988, the same year that van Damme starred in Bloodsport. Because of this, the movie had a great potential. Unfortunately, potential doesn't mean anything at all. This movie was in fact a VERY bad one. The plot is surprisingly equal to a Bond movie. An American airplane with a new laser guidance system crashes in the Mediterranena sea. The movie takes place on Malta, where both Soviets and Americans want to get their hands on this airplane. The lead in this movie is not van Damme, but instead Sho Kosugi who plays some kind of American agent. It was surprising to see van Damme as some kind of bad guy, and as a Soviet. The action scenes in this movie are very bad. So is the story, and totally this means that the movie sucks.