Ruthless crime boss Randall (Paul Murphy) is intent on seizing control of SouthEast England's cocaine business, and is willing to kill anyone who stands in his way; but Randall bites off more than he can chew when he double-crosses fearless hit-man Walker (Nick Rendell).
The cover of the Uncensored, Uncut, Widescreen, Collector's Special Edition DVD of Sudden Fury is plastered with glowing quotes, and to date, IMDb offers almost overwhelmingly positive reviews—so how did this apparently amazing powerhouse of 'manic intensity' and 'savage energy' manage to slip under my radar for over 12 years? The answer: because it's not very good—an independent, low-budget, shot-on video effort that attempts in vain to replicate the brutality and grittiness of 70s and 80s Euro-crime flicks, but which fails thanks to a lazy script which relies so heavily on expletives that I can only assume writer/director Darren Ward was going for the World Record for most swearing in a movie (and would wager that he succeeded), and a cast who are, with the exception of David Warbeck, simply dreadful.
Admittedly, I didn't purchase Sudden Fury for it's Oscar worthy performances, beautiful cinematography or sparkling dialogue, but was lured into watching by the promise of unbelievably bloody violence, and to be fair, the claims of extremely brutal nastiness prove to be true: there's plenty of sadistic torture and quite a few semi-decent action sequences that provide enthusiastic gore and splattery squib-work. However, the plot and acting in this film are so completely diabolical that all the blood and guts in the world cannot prevent it from being an extremely wretched affair.
With a running time of around 102 minutes, there are far too many opportunities for our budding thesps to practise their art, and between the bursts of violence, viewers are treated to countless dull-as-ditchwater scenes in which various bad guys face-off with each other whilst swearing a lot and gesticulating wildly (either because the 'actors' are completely at a loss at what to do with their limbs whilst their mouths are moving, or are under the misguided notion that pointing a lot equates to a powerful performance).
I give Sudden Fury a rating of 2.5 out of 10 for being so irksome for so much of the time, but generously add an extra half point for its gratuitously violent content, the so-crap-it's-funny sex scene between troubled hit-man anti-hero Walker and a coke-addled hooker, several hilarious jungle warfare flashbacks that look as though they were filmed in the local woods (because they were), and a full-body burn stunt that is actually pretty impressive.
