Death Warrant Details

Even for a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, this is an excessively violent, if clinically efficient, exercise in body pulverising. Van Damme stars as a maverick Royal Canadian Mountie (yes, you did read that correctly!), sent to a prison where there's been a series of grisly unsolved murders. There he comes face to face with an old foe: the psychopathic “Sandman”, played with zealous enthusiasm by Patrick Kilpatrick. To some extent this marked a career breakthrough for Van Damme, who got to play not just a kickboxer, but — hey! — an undercover kickboxer. Deran Sarafian's direction is brutally efficient, while the script, such as it is, seems merely an excuse to get Van Damme into situations where he has to fight himself out. Fans of the “Muscles from Brussels” won't be disappointed, though.

An implausible thriller, given little sense of reality but affording opportunities, readily taken, for violence.