Death Warrant
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| Death Warrant | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Deran Sarafian |
| Produced by | Mark DiSalle |
| Written by | David S. Goyer |
| Starring | Jean-Claude Van Damme Robert Guillaume Cynthia Gibb |
| Music by | Gary Chang |
| Cinematography | Russell Carpenter |
| Editing by | John A. Barton Cheryl Kroll G. Gregg McLaughlin |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Release date(s) | September 14, 1990  |
| Running time | 93 min. |
| Country | USA Canada |
| Language | English |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Death Warrant is a 1990 action movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. The film was written by David S. Goyer while a student at USC, and was Goyer's first screenplay to be sold and produced commercially.
[edit] Plot summary
Detective Louis Burke (Jean-Claude Van Damme) confronts a maniac called the Sandman (Patrick Kilpatrick) in an abandoned house. Although the Sandman nearly kills Burke, the partner of a cop that the Sandman killed, Burke manages to stop him with a bullet.
Sixteen months later, Burke joins a task force put together by the governor to investigate a series of unexplained deaths in the Harrison State Prison in California.
While Burke poses as an inmate, attorney Amanda Beckett (Cynthia Gibb) acts the role of his wife. Burke and Beckett don't care for each other much in the beginning.
In the penitentiary, Burke is forced to survive in an environment so dismal and filthy that it makes a public restroom in a New York City subway look like the Hilton.
But though he is surrounded by hostility and suspicion, Burke succeeds in befriending a few of the inmates, including Hawkins (Robert Guillaume) and Priest (Abdul Salaam El Razzac), who help him with the investigation.
Meanwhile, more inmates are mysteriously murdered. Burke's cellmate Konefke (Conrad Dunn) is killed, and stone-faced prison guard DeGraff (Art LeFleur) puts Burke in solitary confinement, where he's interrogated and beaten.
As if the insult and injury that Burke endures were not enough, the Sandman ends up at Harrison. And it's later revealed that the prisoners are being murdered for their body organs. Back on the outside, Beckett attends a party given by Vogler (George Dickerson), the state's attorney general.
Just as she's preparing to tell him about the slayings at the prison, Beckett receives a call from her computer whiz kid assistant, who identifies Vogler's henchman Keane (Jack Bannon) as the man behind the murders, which also involve Dr. Gottesman (Armin Shimerman), the surgeon who harvests the organs to be sold to people who are in desperate need of them.
The assistant's suspicions are confirmed when Vogler tries to kill Beckett. Burke begins an escape from the penitentiary, pursued by the Sandman and hundreds of angry inmates who have been set free and armed with the knowledge that Burke is a cop.
Burke and the Sandman have a final, brutal showdown in which Burke kicks the Sandman, head first, onto a spike, then breaks his jaw and kills him. And then Burke goes after Vogler, Keane, and Gottesma.
