Sudden Death: The Audiobook

There were many ways I could have chosen to celebrate the Best Van Damme Week Ever at Bulletproof Action. I could have attempted the splits between two chairs, punched out a rattlesnake, or performed a goofy dance while wearing a vest and some extraordinarily high waisted trousers.

Instead, I choose to mark the occasion by investigating a curious off-shoot from Jean-Claude’s film career: the Sudden Death audiobook.

Even into the 90s, it was still standard practice for Hollywood studios to commission a novelisation of their biggest films to make a little extra lucre. However, as far as I am aware, it certainly was not standard operating procedure to also produce an audiobook.

My interest was already piqued, and when I heard it was narrated by the great Powers Boothe, I felt compelled to check it out. So, here’s what I made of Sudden Death: The Audiobook.

You gotta have faith

You could well imagine that in translating the action from the cinema screen to the cassette tape, you would need to make some radical changes. But the audiobook proves to be very faithful to the film. The sequence in which events take place and the way in which they occur is almost identical. Even the dialogue attributed to different characters often appears to be taken verbatim from the movie.

More on McCord

Despite the faithfulness to the film, one of the interesting aspects of the audiobook are the little extra details that it gives about our hero, Darren McCord. We learn that he was once a karate champion before joining the fire department. Given that the film does not bother to explain how JCVD can use martial arts skills to fight off numerous goons (and a penguin), we appreciated its inclusion here.

McCord is also portrayed as a more troubled character. The film rather skates over the emotional impact of losing his job with the fire service and the breakup of his marriage. However, in the audiobook we get some insight into the toll of those loses and how McCord had to rebuild his life. This trauma also plays into audiobook’s climax where McCord – who is trying to rescue his daughter – struggles to overcome painful memories that flashback into his mind, threatening to paralyse him at a crucial moment. All this adds a psychological depth to McCord’s character that we do not get in the film.

Intriguingly, the audiobook portrays Van Damme’s McCord as something of a ladies’ man. When he meets his ex-wife, we hear his internal voice give an appreciation of her finely-toned body, and there’s a similar moment later when he runs into the lady who plays the mascot ‘Icy’ at the stadium. Narratively, these details are totally redundant, but portraying McCord as a randy old goat certainly brought a smile to my face.

Van Damme vs Boothe

As this article is part of our Van Damme week content, it is worth noting the decision to make Powers Boothe – the film’s villain, lest we forget – the narrator of this audiobook. Sadly, history does not record the logic behind this choice. Perhaps it was down to availability, although it was more likely that Boothe – as a native English speaker – was simply better equipped to deliver more than 3 hours of audio content, than our favourite Belgian-brogue-d beat‘em-up star.

So how does the Deadwood doyen do? Blessed with a soft, sinuously playful Texan drawl, Powers is a simply wonderful narrator. His bourbon-soaked burr of a voice casually and effortlessly injects drama into the tale. And, like a weathervane, it sensitively signals the shifting winds of the story. It was enough to make me imagine that I could happily listen to the Boothe-ster read the small print of a website’s cookie policy and still be utterly spellbound.

An exploding ending

I will need to beg your indulgence for this section. As I run Exploding Helicopter, I could hardly review this audiobook without a word on the climatic helicopter explosion. In the film, this provides a visually dramatic and pyrotechnic-filled ending. But how will it translate to an audio drama? The answer: not too badly.

While nothing can replace the thrill of being able to see a helicopter crash onto the ice at Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena, the audio drama’s writer and Powers Boothe do a sterling job of recreating that delight through the power of language.

Perhaps more interesting, was the scene’s postscript. McCord emerges from the maelstrom to be reunited with his hitherto estranged wife. It is a baffling move as the groundwork for this reconciliation has not been established at any point. I guess that is the movies or, in this case, the audio dramas for you.