Death Warrant
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Movie Reviews of Death Warrant
Movie Review: NICE ACTION FLICK!!!
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie is great! I rememeber seeing it when it first came out and its just vintage Van Damme with his fancy kicks! The story is ok. An undercover cop goes to jail to find out who is murdering the inmates! This is definitely a must for any fan of martial arts and action!Movie Review: WOW!! Van Damne is in prison
Summary: 4 Stars
I liked this movie, filled with a couple of fight scenes.At the end he fights the sandman,across Van Damne kicked his ass.This is a good slambanging Van Damne flick.Movie Review: A pleasant but average Van Damme Entry
Summary: 3 Stars
The Sept.14th./90 release of Jean Claude Van Damme's film Death Warrant,did well at the box office.Van Damme at the time was the up and coming new kid on the block and this fresh faced guy with the good physique and great martial moves caught movie goers attention pretty quick.He squeezed his way into the pack which included such established action stars as Chuck Norris,Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.
Death Warrant sees Van Damme as Louis Burke,an RCMP officer out of Quebec(I get a kick out of how the writers of his many films have come up with unique or funny ways to explain his Belgian accent!).The film opens as he is on a stake out and he is confronted by the Sandman played by Patrick Kilpatrick.In the canon of Van Damme films this character rates high as one of Van Damme's most evil and twisted nemeses.He fires several shots into the Sandman and he presumably goes down for the final count.
We next find Van Damme attending a meeting chaired by the Governor's assistant Tom Vogler(George Dickerson).It seems there have been a number of killings in the local pen and they want Burke to go into mole mode to find out the dope on what's going down.They cook up a phony rap sheet and plunk him into the slammer post haste and he's off,feet running.Being the new fish he's challenged quite frequently but the info he seeks starts trickling in.
With the help of two inmates,the Priest(Abdul Salaam El Razzac)and Hawkins(Robert Guillaume),Burke slowly finds out the truth.It seems the killings are not only a deadly secret amongst the guards but they are being orchestrated with outside help.They are deliberate killings of newer inmates to harvest their vital organs.On the outside Burke has the assistance of lawyer Amanda Beckett(Cynthia Gibb),who is his liaison and is posing as his wife.Both pool their info and when Amanda finally returns to let Vogler know of what they have discovered,she is confronted with a gun and the ugly truth.It seems Vogler himself deliberately orchestrated the killings initially so he could obtain a liver for his then dying wife.Since then the rest have been for profit.The only thing that saves Amanda from getting silenced permanently by Vogler is the interruption of the tete a'tete by Vogler's wife.
Meanwhile in order to silence Burke Vogler has had a notorious inmate transferred into the prison;none other than the man Burke thought he had killed at the beginning of the film,the Sandman!? In front of the inmates Burke and the Sandman go at it toe to toe.Burke at one point even kicks the Sandman into a fiery furnace,only to see him pop back out shorty after in flames.Getting back up for another go the Sandman is finally finished off for good.Burke leaves the prison,bloodied and into the arms of his new love Amanda.
The plot here while mundane is saved over and over by the solid acting of the cast.Stand outs include one eyed Robert Guillaume as Hawkins,the scary pop-eyed Priest,played wonderfully by Abdul Salaam El Razzac and Sgt Degraf played dog-mean and tough by Art Lafleur.It is the characterizations over plot that dominate the entire film and bring the grittiness of the prison environment to life.The film loses its' impact because it gets off to a shaky and rather slow start.The opening scenes while establishing a raison d'etre for events to transpire later are left to hang with absolutely no thread to join the rest of the plot to,until near the end of the film.And when we finally get that the connecting thread is the Sandman,our credulity is stretched to the max.Burke had pumped enough lead into that creep to fill a 45 gallon drum in the opening but yet near the end he's up and walking around no worse for wear.The Sandman's taunt that he"can't be killed" still doesn't get us totally past this imagination stretch.Is he supernatural? Not likely as Burke does eventually dispatch him to his maker.We're just left to wonder how.
Technically this film DVD release of 2001 while clear could use a proper remastering as it can get a bit too grainy.It is however in in its' original a/r of 1:85:1.It comes with no special features to speak of,is on a one sided disc and is in a thick keepcase.
In conclusion Death Warrant is short on plot but long on memorable characterizations due to its' solid cast.The plot meanders for the first while until settling into a nice groove about 20 minutes in.It is one of his earlier efforts and just an average film.I find it funny that a later and far more outstanding film of Van Damme's like Legionaire(and several others)wouldn't do the box office that this film did.Don't ya just love Hollywood!
Movie Review: "I don't pay, I don't punk"
Summary: 3 Stars
"Death Warrant" is one of the least popular of Van Damme's films from this era. Its obscurity is not due to lack of distribution like No Retreat, No Surrender or lack of quality like Black Eagle - it simply just doesn't stand out inbetween the other stuff he did during this time. Don't get me wrong, it's still a good offering from the Muscles from Brussels before he went entirely mainstream, but it has a definite throwaway feel to it: the story's been done before, the fight scenes aren't anything out of the ordinary, and the characters aren't fun enough to care much about. "Death Warrant" doesn't have anything wrong with it other than how generic it is, but coming from a time when Van Damme's flicks were at least moderately creative, this hurts the film more than it would have otherwise.
The story: Canadian policeman Louis Burke (Van Damme) - a hero after catching a vicious serial killer called 'the Sandman' (Patrick Kilpatrick, Minority Report) - goes undercover in prison to investigate a series of slayings among inmates. Reluctantly aided by a weathered convict (Robert Guillaume, Benson) and a feisty attorney posing as his wife (Cynthia Gibb, Gypsy), he uncovers a heinous trafficking scheme of the deadliest sort.
Thirteen years after the theatrical release of this one, Van Damme would revisit the prison subgenre via the direct-to-video In Hell. While the DTV flick was a gritty, unsettling spectacle that emphasized realism of incarceration, "Death Warrant" is a fairly easy-to-digest macho yarn devoid of rape and a sense of despair and hopelessness. Sure, you have the given unpleasantries of the sadistic warden (Art LaFleur, Santa Clause 2) and racial/gang tensions, but the realism ends there: it seems the only time the prisoners are not milling around the entire facility at their leisure is when it's inconvenient to the plot, and a dealer/pimp character played by Abdul Salaam El Razzac is not only allowed to have the entire basement of the prison to himself but is somehow also in possession of a cell phone which Burke can use to call the outside. I'm not a stickler for realism, but I think that last bit is pushing it.
For a Van Damme movie, this one really doesn't have a lot of action. Forget about gunfights and car chases entirely, but don't count too much on the martial arts content either. Amidst a meager smattering of token roundhouse kicks, Van Damme only has two real one-on-one encounters: the first one against Hollywood's premier Asian enforcer Al Leong is decent but forgettable even though the two of them wield a chain and mop handle to painful effect, whereas the second one - the showdown with the Sandman - is memorable for Kilpatrick's truly threatening presence as the killer but is more of a brawl than a karate fight. This overall lack of martial thrills is disappointing but the film still feels complete thanks to rounded script by Hollywood heavyweight David Goyer (Batman Begins) and the endearing performance of Robert Guillaume as Burke's ally. It actually feels less like an action outing than a genuine thriller...though one with very little character development and plot implausibility out the butt.
Cumulatively, what we have here is a fairly by-the-numbers Van Damme outing wherein he gets the girl, shouts a lot, and gets to deliver a slow-motion flying kick. This ought to be enough for fans, but what with it being bookended by films more significantly defining to his career, I'd be surprised to find many people who claim this as their favorite. There's no reason not to pick it up other than using it to represent Van Damme's filmography as a whole: again, this one's good, but it's not nearly his best work.
Movie Review: Entertainment Warrant
Summary: 3 Stars
Jean-Claude Van Damme's martial arts extravaganza is bolstered by some fine editing, a dark, scary soundtrack, and some mighty fine camera work. Despite some B-level acting (except for Robert Guillaume as a supply doling inmate) director, Deran Sarafian, keeps the whole affair rolling along well enough to provide some key suspenseful moments. The plot involves police investigator, Louis Burke (Van Damme), who becomes a mole in prison while investigating a deadly crime ring while the elusive "Sandman" lurks in the background with nine-lives more reminiscent of Michael Myers than a super criminal. Although this element breaks up the film's credibility somewhat, it ups the tension as well. In the end 'Death Warrant' is a lively hour and a half movie that has enough going for it to make you forget its weaknesses.
A J.P.'s Pick 3's = Good