Let's be realistic.

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

When I sat down to watch this movie last evening I expected a fairly ordinary direct-to-video (actually it was released to cinema in France) action movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme that would, at best, be somewhat entertaining. Well I was wrong. After having watched the movie I had to say: Wow that was a good movie! Now the threshold for that wow was of course a bit lower than usual since I was not expecting that much from the movie but still, this is a surprisingly good movie.Sure it has its silly moves and plot holes like most movies of this kind but it is miles away from the usual brain-dead run-of-the-mill action movie.First of all, Jean-Claude Van Dame makes a quite decent, even good, performance. Personally I am not much for these sentimental cry-scenes but Jean-Claude manages to make these parts well and at the same time he is brutally cool when he is out seeking his revenge.The action in the movie is also very enjoyable whether it is car chases, motorcycle chases or martial art displays. When it comes to the latter Jean-Claude proves that he is still good at making these scenes unlike for instance Steven Seagal who mostly stands in one spot waving his hands while trying to hide his beer belly. At times the movie is quite cruel. There is a torture scene which is really good without being unnecessarily graphic. Speaking of graphics, the entire movie is well shot. The cinematography is simply very good. I would even say that for this kind of movie it is great. At times this is a very dark movie and those parts of the movie are really the best.For me this was a very positive surprise and I found this movie very well worth watching

This is one of the Van Damme's best at action. I wonder why it is rated so low. 5.5 oh... come on, you are kidding me. If this is 5.5 then The Punisher must be 4.5. If you want the word A..C..T..I..O...N then don't miss it. If you are Van Damme fan, go buy the DVD. This is not just Van Damme's best, it is one of the best action movies ever made. Movie really has a story because I still remember it. Even after 2 years I can clearly recollect those terrific action scenes. It contains a few brutal scenes, shows "serious feelings of Van Damme" and of course ...A....C....T...I...O...N. This movie hits hard on face. This movie is going to make a permanent mark in your memory.

The atmosphere was there, the acting was good enough (although I think the badtub scene was pretty poor there), the story was there and the scenes where there yet someone managed to make this film pretty bad still. The problem is in the action scenes which where edited very poorly imho, some nice shots but no "thrill" factor whatsoever. Also the pursuit scenes where too loaded with bs. Lastly some scenes in the movie just didn't make any sense, for example the restaurant scene, where the Chinese dudes including the main guy come for the girl, they whipe everyone out and leave without ever really bothering looking for the girl...Again, this could have been a better movie but too many mistakes where made.

All too often in Van Damme movies (or any action movie, for that matter), the action is dumbed down or spread out along a goofy story that is clearly only an excuse for gunfights and car chases. Wake of Death has a moderately clever story and is moderately delivered, but much more emphasis is put on the action. It's gritty and unapologetic with its violence, clearly trying to effectively capture the mob world in which it takes place, and also features what might be Van Damme's best actual acting performance of his entire career. There's an emotional scene in the movie that is so intense it's almost difficult to watch, so I don't want to hear any more from these people who are constantly whining that Van Damme can't act. I'd like to see any of YOU show me anything close to what he did in this movie! Van Damme stars as Ben Archer, an aging mobster who wants to get out and have a normal life with his family. Of course, his family doesn't know what he really does for a living, as far as they know, he is in the "bar" business. Claiming to be tired of the noise and the smoke and the drinking, he tells his incredulous superior that he wants out, and then heads home. Having seen this set-up a dozen times or more, we know that nothing good can come of this.Ben's wife, Cynthia, is a social worker, and soon finds herself with the problem of a boatload of Chinese refugees, all of whom must be detained and shipped back to China. Strangely, though, they are refugees from Hong Kong. I didn't know there were many refugees coming out of Hong Kong in the early 21st century. In fact, I can't think of a time in modern Chinese history when there were refugees coming from Hong Kong.Clearly, this is unimportant to writers Mick Davis and Laurent Fellous, who seem to be just going on the assumption that, because of Mao Tse-tung's brutal, murderous regime, there have pretty much always been refugees coming from China. The ones in the movie definitely look like mainland Chinese and not people from Hong Kong, except for the little girl, who looks Korean and is even named Kim. I can tell you one thing, out of almost 1.4 billion people in mainland China, not one of them is named Kim! Anyway, Cynthia sees this young girl and decides she's too cute to be shipped back to the horrors of Hong Kong, so she risks her job and reputation to take the girl under her wing. Unfortunately, she is the daughter of Sun Quan, a Chinese mobster of the triad variety (you remember them from the Infernal Affairs movies). Quan, clearly, is not happy about his daughter living with some white people ("foreign devils," as they were called back when people really were trying to flee from China), so he sets out to find her, killing anyone who gets in his way.At this point, the movie becomes astonishingly violent, even for a Van Damme film. The movie violence is serious here, like in serious gangster movies. The profanity is thick and the movie is not afraid to shoot older women in the face, showing us her exploding head. I had never seen anything like that in any of Van Damme's movies. Quan kills Cynthia, and Ben's grieving her loss is one of the best scenes in the movie, and one of the best examples of Van Damme's acting ability from his entire career.The soundtrack is suitably depressing when it needs to be, such as in the opening credits, which features one of those god-awful moody soap-opera-ish love songs, like the worst of the Bond themes. There is a major slip-up as the little girl doesn't speak a word of English and then, in the same second that Cynthia starts speaking Chinese (she explains that her grandparents are Chinese, as if language was hereditary), Kim busts out with her perfect American English. Nice. I've been teaching English at a University in central China for two years now, and let me tell you, it is almost impossible to teach them to speak English with any accent other than a Chinese one. For that you have to have been raised in America (or Canada, as it were).The movie is not a cognitive workout, of course, but it is definitely a solid action movie that deserves more recognition than it got. Sadly, like the great Bruce Campbell, Van Damme is a little bit of what they call "box office poison," although I would like to suggest that the reason for this is because of the bad press that he gets from people who jump on the bandwagon, uniformly criticizing his acting and his movies without even really knowing what they're talking about. No, he's not Orson Welles, but he stands for important things and, for all of the shallowness that we've seen in his films, occasionally he takes it upon himself to prove to us that yes, he can act.The problem is that all too often his target audience doesn't require him to, we just want to see his kick the hell out of some bad guys. Wake of Death is the most violent movie he has ever made, and is proof that he is better than most people think he is. I hope one day he really gets the respect that he deserves!