When your main actor possesses martial arts abilities that obviously dwarf his acting skills, the choice of genres and plot settings for his films seems limited. In case of Jean Claude Van Damme in the early part of his career one of such more sensible choices was prison, used as setting for Death Warrant, 1990 action film directed by Deran Sarafian.
Van Damme plays Louis Burke, Royal Canadian Mounted Police detective who came to Los Angeles to track down and catch vicious psychopathic killer Christian “the Sandman” Naylor (played by Patrick Kilpatrick). In the beginning Burke shoots him and has him arrested. Sixteen months later, apparently still in California, he is summoned by California’s state attorney general Tom Vogler (played by George Dickerson) to join task force investigating series of mysterious murders in Harrington, one of state’s penitentiaries. Since Burke is Canadian and nobody knows him, he seems ideal choice for undercover work in prison, posing as an inmate convicted for armed robbery. His liaison with the outside world is Amanda Beckett (played by Cynthia Gibb), one of Vogler’s assistants who would pose as his wife. As soon as Burke enters the prison, he gets in trouble because of his unfamiliarity with prison’s unofficial rules that, among other things, ban prisoners from befriending people of different race. His ability to solve those problems with his martial arts skills and kindness of his character in the end earn him respect of Hawkins (played by Robert Guillaume), leader of black prison gang. Burke begins to discover evidence of prisoners being murdered as part of organ harvesting scheme. But before he gets an opportunity to expose its organiser, Sandman, who has recovered from his wounds, arrives in Harrington and exposes him as policeman, thus turning entire prison population, including Hawkins, into sworn enemies and forcing Burke to use all of his ingenuity to stay alive.
Death Warrant was based on debut script of David S. Goyer, who would few decades later become one of the most successful writers in Hollywood. Originally conceived for Cannon Films, struggling B-film production company that went bankrupt before the actual production, it was made with low budget. Van Damme delivers goods in terms of martial arts action, but those scenes are poorly directed by Deran Serafian, especially somewhat confusing final showdown. Goyer’s script, on one hand, tries to solve some problems – like the protagonist’s Quebecois background as an excuse for Van Damme’s heavy accent – while creates other with serious plot holes, implausibilities (Burke using his real life name during dangerous undercover mission) and completely unnecessary romantic subplot between Burke and Beckett (which suffers because of predictable lack of chemistry between wooden Van Damme and more experienced Gibb). The plot twist at the end and the revelation of the actual villain is another example of Goyer’s lack of creativity; character of Sandman, although played well by Patrick Kilipatrick, looks like it was artificially brought from slasher films about unstoppable supernatural killers, and it is adequately used only near the end. Some of the character actors do their jobs well, especially Guillaume and Art LaFleur as sadistic prison guard. There are couple of scenes that show some creativity – like Beckett hiring teenage hacker who develops a little bit too fondness for her (played by Joshua John Miller) or prison having its own subterranean transsexual brothel run by charismatic “Priest” (played by Abdul Saalam El-Razac). More such details and at least some script polishing could have made Death Warrant into something more successful. Although it had success at the box office, today is considered one of the lesser works in Van Damme’s filmography and it could be recommended only to the most loyal among his fans.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
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