There are bad movies. Then there are bad prison movies. And then there’s Death Warrant, which feels like it was written during a head injury and filmed between kickboxing matches. It stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as a cop who goes undercover in a prison to investigate some shady inmate deaths, and it plays out exactly how you’d expect if someone gave a meathead $10 million and said, “Pretend The Shawshank Redemption is a Sega Genesis game.”
This is a movie where the only thing harder than surviving prison is surviving the script.
Plot? What Plot?
The movie opens with Van Damme’s character, Detective Louis Burke (whose name sounds like it belongs to a suburban dentist), killing a serial killer in a creepy basement. Flash forward to him volunteering to go undercover in prison to investigate a string of inmate murders. Why the LAPD would send a Belgian karate machine into a maximum-security prison like some discount Rambo is never explained—just go with it, because the script certainly doesn’t.
Once inside, Burke discovers that inmates are being harvested for their organs in a plot twist so dumb, you can actually hear the screenwriter shrug through the dialogue. It’s Minority Report meets Mortal Kombat, minus the intelligence or choreography.
Van Damme: Flexing and Phoning It In
Jean-Claude Van Damme has the emotional range of a coffee table in this movie. He punches things. He kicks things. He squints like he’s trying to remember his lines. That’s the performance.
There’s a lot of brooding in corners and stiff one-liners delivered like he’s reading a ransom note. And while nobody watches a JCVD movie for Shakespearean acting, it would’ve been nice if he looked like he cared even a little bit. His French accent is thicker than the prison walls, and he delivers lines like, “I want to go in,” with the emotional depth of a GPS voice.
The Prison: Where Stereotypes Go to Die
This isn’t a prison. It’s a rejected level from Double Dragon. Every inmate is either a drooling maniac, a greasy wisecracker, or someone so cartoonishly evil you expect them to twirl a mustache and cackle.
There’s a computer hacker, a crazy cannibal, a corrupt warden, a sleazy doctor, and a collection of random thugs who look like they were recruited from a local biker bar casting call. Nobody in this prison seems to follow a routine, eat food, or go outside. It’s just nonstop beatings, stabbings, and sinister whispers about “the program.”
The Villain: More Like Mildly Inconvenient Guy
Patrick Kilpatrick plays “The Sandman,” a serial killer Burke thought he killed in the first scene. Turns out, Sandman’s alive and kicking—and inexplicably transferred into the same prison halfway through the movie. What luck!
He growls. He sneers. He stabs people in the kidneys. He’s meant to be terrifying, but comes off like Freddy Krueger’s less charismatic cousin. The climax features Van Damme and Sandman having a jailhouse brawl that feels like a low-budget wrestling promo filmed in a boiler room.
The Organ Harvesting Twist: Did Alex Jones Write This?
So here’s the big reveal: the prison doctor is harvesting organs from inmates and selling them on the black market. And the warden is in on it. Because why not? The script must’ve come from a Mad Libs session fueled by cheap whiskey and late-night reruns of 60 Minutes.
The film plays this like a major twist, but it’s telegraphed so obviously, you half expect a PowerPoint presentation titled “Yes, We’re the Bad Guys.” The absurdity of the premise is only matched by how little anyone seems to question it. Forget paperwork. Forget checks and balances. Just scoop out a liver and ship it FedEx, apparently.
Dialogue So Bad It Hurts
Lines like:
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“You’re not a cop… you’re a dead man!”
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“Welcome to Hell, pretty boy.”
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“I’ll take your kidney now.”
It’s like the movie was written by a bunch of 13-year-olds who just discovered Die Hard. Every scene ends with a punchline so wooden, it might as well come with termites.
And don’t expect any actual investigation from Burke. His version of “undercover detective work” is wandering around looking angry until someone tries to stab him.
Bright Spots? Don’t Blink
If we’re being generous, the fight scenes are… okay. Van Damme does his patented spin kicks and the occasional flying roundhouse. There’s a half-decent kitchen fight where someone almost gets boiled like a lobster, which is pretty fun. But even the action feels rushed and awkward, like the director realized they only had the prison set for another afternoon and said, “Just punch him again!”
The film is grimy but not gritty, violent but not thrilling, and paced like a dying lawnmower.
Final Thoughts: Sentence This Movie to Solitary
Death Warrant is a limp, brain-dead action flick that doesn’t know if it wants to be Escape from Alcatraz, Robocop, or Bloodsport. It squanders its setup, wastes its talent, and delivers a finale that should come with a court-mandated apology.
Van Damme fans might tolerate it out of loyalty, but even they’d admit: this movie is one big prison sentence.
Final Verdict: 1/5 Confiscated Shanks
Watch it if you’re on house arrest and your remote is broken. Otherwise, give your brain the early parole it deserves.
