{"id":2581,"date":"2024-08-19T21:31:05","date_gmt":"2024-08-19T21:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2581"},"modified":"2024-10-13T19:19:35","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T23:19:35","slug":"death-warrant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/19\/death-warrant\/","title":{"rendered":"Death Warrant"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Death Warrant<\/strong> (1990)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MGM\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 89 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence. language, brief rear nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Deran Sarafian\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David S. Goyer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Gary Chang\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Russell Carpenter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 14, 1990 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Robert Guillaume, Cynthia Gibb, George Dickerson, Art LaFleur, Patrick Kilpatrick, Abdul Salaam El-Razzac, Armin Shimerman, Joshua Miller, Larry Hankin, Hank Woessner, George Jenesky, Jack Bannon, Paulo Tocha, Kamel Krifa, Al Leong.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $16.8M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Jean-Claude Van Damme action movie Death Warrant<\/strong> might not have seen the light of day if not for MGM. Originally titled Dusted, it was supposed to be released by Cannon. Unfortunately, they went bankrupt during post-production forcing them to turn it and their other remaining titles (including Delta Force 2) over to MGM. They renamed it Death Warrant<\/strong> and released it to theaters in September \u201990 after some haggling over which studio logo should appear at the beginning.<\/p>\n

\u00a0JCVD plays Burke, a Canadian cop who goes undercover as an inmate in a California prison to investigate a series of murders. He\u2019s part of a task force organized by the governor and state attorney general Tom Vogler (Dickerson, Death Wish 4: The Crackdown). He\u2019s to report his findings to liaison Amanda Beckett (Gibb, Youngblood) who will be posing as his wife.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Burke, in the guise of a friend of the most recent victim, starts asking questions. Nobody is willing to answer them. They\u2019re afraid of something or somebody. The cop continues to poke around with some help from an older inmate named Hawkins (Guillaume, Wanted Dead or Alive) who he saved from getting killed earlier and another prisoner everybody calls Priest (Razzac, Malcolm X). He\u2019s the guy who can get anything you want for a price.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Although it\u2019s supposed to be an undercover operation, somebody high up knows about Burke and wants him silenced for good. This person arranges for a vicious serial killer known as \u201cThe Sandman\u201d (Kirkpatrick, Class of 1999) to be transferred in. Burke has a history with the psycho; he\u2019s the one who captured him. This throws a monkey wrench into the investigation. With his life in mortal danger, Burke must fight his way out or end up on a slab.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The 80s and 90s were great decades for action movies. I\u2019m talking about real<\/em> action movies, not the bloated, mega-budgeted assaults on the senses featuring superheroes or giant alien robots. I\u2019m talking about the ones starring legitimate tough guys like Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Norris and JCVD. Death Warrant<\/strong> is a fine example of the type of action film I mean. It has a simple plot, many fight scenes and a cool cast of familiar faces like George Jenesky (aka Francis \u201cPsycho\u201d Sawyer from Stripes) and the ubiquitous Al Leong (Lethal Weapon, Die Hard). Art LaFleur (Cobra), always a welcome presence, co-stars as the sadistic head guard who might be involved in the killings. The odd man out here is Joshua Miller (River\u2019s Edge) as a nerdy \u201ccomputer cowboy\u201d who lends his expertise while hitting on Amanda at every opportunity. I guess you could call the hormonal teen comic relief, but he\u2019s not a perfect fit. He feels out of place here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Director Deran Sarafian (Gunmen), working from a script by David S. Goyer (the Blade trilogy), keeps things moving along at a nice clip. It\u2019s a good thing he does. Otherwise, it might give audiences a chance to think about the plot and nobody wants that. Like any action director worth his weight in popcorn, Sarafian just wants the audience to have a good time rooting for the star. He largely succeeds in that endeavor with Death Warrant<\/strong>. It\u2019s goofy and definitely doesn\u2019t stand up to any amount of scrutiny, but it sure is fun.<\/p>\n

\u00a0We all know JCVD is no thespian. Hell, he\u2019s barely an actor. He\u2019s a martial artist, a gifted one at that, who works in films. He\u2019s at his best when he\u2019s kicking ass which is precisely what he does in Death Warrant<\/strong>. He kicks a lot of it. His fight with Leong is brief but memorable. I mention it because he has a more convincing relationship with this opponent that he does with Gibb. I didn\u2019t buy their budding romance for a second. There\u2019s no chemistry there.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Gibb is a decent actress. She made a few movies- Youngblood (1986), Modern Girls (1986), Malone (1987), Short Circuit 2 (1988) and the TV adaptation of the musical Gypsy (1993)- before not going on to stardom. She\u2019s okay in Death Warrant<\/strong>, but hardly what I\u2019d call exceptional. Guillaume is very good as Burke\u2019s reluctant ally. He says he owes the man nothing for saving his life early on, but he still sticks his neck out. I like Kilpatrick a lot. He\u2019s a great villain who ranks right alongside the best of them (e.g. Brian Thompson, Brion James and Billy Drago). His climactic fight against JCVD is awesome.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Death Warrant<\/strong> is a good, gritty action movie that won\u2019t let down fans of the star or the genre. It\u2019s the kind of movie that used to play as the co-feature with a bigger movie back when cinemas showed double features. It\u2019s among the last of a dying breed.\"\"<\/p>\n

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Death Warrant (1990)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 MGM\/Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 89 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence. language, brief rear nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Deran Sarafian\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David S. Goyer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Gary Chang\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Russell Carpenter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 14, 1990 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Robert Guillaume, Cynthia Gibb, George Dickerson, Art LaFleur, Patrick Kilpatrick, Abdul Salaam El-Razzac, Armin Shimerman, Joshua Miller, Larry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kick-ass-actioners"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Death-Warrant-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2581"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3388,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581\/revisions\/3388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}