Jean-Claude Van Damme performs a great move in Black Eagle, dropping into the splits to avoid a kick from Shô Kosugi, and then quickly popping back up into fighting stance; in fact, he does it twice. This impressive acrobatic trick is about the only notable thing about the whole movie, which is little more than an excuse for Kosugi to take his kids on a jolly to the Mediterranean. As such, it's a real bore for fight fans, being much more travelogue than it is martial arts flick, Kosugi and sons taking in the sights and sounds of sun-drenched Malta and Rome.
The weak James Bond-style plot sees special agent Ken Tani (Shô Kosugi) given the task of retrieving a top secret laser guidance system from an F-111 jet that has crashed into the sea off the coast of Malta. Also trying to get their hands on the contents of the plane are some evil Russians, who stoop to kidnapping Tani's two kids (played by Shô's reall-life sons) to get what they want. Van Damme, in one of his early non-heroic roles, plays Soviet martial artist henchman Andrei.
Sloppily directed, poorly acted (its two stars mangle the English language), badly written trash, Black Eagle isn't even laughably awful - it's just boring. With this kind of cheap straight-to-video nonsense, one usually expects a decent dose of action, no matter how poorly executed, but the film delivers very little to get excited about: Van Damme's three bouts against Kosugi are (nifty splits move aside) poorly choreographed and all too brief; it says a lot about the movie as a whole that one of Kosugi's young sons has the best fight scene.
The weak James Bond-style plot sees special agent Ken Tani (Shô Kosugi) given the task of retrieving a top secret laser guidance system from an F-111 jet that has crashed into the sea off the coast of Malta. Also trying to get their hands on the contents of the plane are some evil Russians, who stoop to kidnapping Tani's two kids (played by Shô's reall-life sons) to get what they want. Van Damme, in one of his early non-heroic roles, plays Soviet martial artist henchman Andrei.
Sloppily directed, poorly acted (its two stars mangle the English language), badly written trash, Black Eagle isn't even laughably awful - it's just boring. With this kind of cheap straight-to-video nonsense, one usually expects a decent dose of action, no matter how poorly executed, but the film delivers very little to get excited about: Van Damme's three bouts against Kosugi are (nifty splits move aside) poorly choreographed and all too brief; it says a lot about the movie as a whole that one of Kosugi's young sons has the best fight scene.