As far as low-budget Jean-Claude Van Damme action vehicles go, you could do a lot worse than Death Warrant. The fifth feature to headline the "Muscles From Brussels" since his breakout in Bloodsport (1988), it also has the distinction of being the first produced screenplay by David S. Goyer, who went on to become one of the biggest screenwriters in Hollywood with the Blade franchise and Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy (at the time, Goyer was a recent graduate of USC's screenwriting program). There is nothing particularly original or daring in Goyer's script, but it features a solid set-up for Van Damme's action antics, which are shot with unusual attention to light and composition by Russell Carpenter, who later became James Cameron's go-to cinematographer, winning an Oscar for Titanic (1997).

Not a moment is wasted after the opening credits, as we are introduced to Van Damme's character, Louis Burke, a member of the Canadian mounted police (which explains the French accent, although his martial-arts prowess and penchant for round-house kicks are left completely unexplained). Louis has come to Los Angeles to track down his partner's killer, a vicious hulk known as The Sandman (Patrick Kilpatrick), who he confronts and dispatches. He is then quickly recruited by police chief Tom Vogler (George Dickerson) to go undercover in a notorious prison to investigate the murder of the assistant warden and nine inmates, all of which may be linked (of course they are). His liaison is Amanda Beckett (Cynthia Gibb), a young lawyer and surrogate daughter to Vogler who poses as Louis's wife so he can feed her information from the inside. He tries to connect with a cynical, one-eyed old-timer named Hawkins (Robert Guillaume) who knows the ropes, but is stymied by both the inmates' strict racial segregation and the presence of the sadistic Sergeant DeGraf (Art LaFleur), who strictly controls every aspect of the inmates' lives.

The plot in Death Warrant unfolds like a murder-mystery, with Louis trying to figure out why so many inmates have been killed. Of course, it is hard to get information in prison where everyone is either paranoid and fearful or vicious and conniving. He eventually gets Hawkins on his side, although his most unusual ally turns out to be a flamboyant, sparkly-eyed transvestite-hustler named Priest (Abdul Salaam El Razzac), who somehow manages to run what appears to be a full-on, red-lit brothel in the prison basement without anyone noticing. The whole film has a charged undercurrent of sexual perversion and anxiety, which makes it a particularly odd and intriguing entry in Van Damme's early work. One can't help but wonder if Burke and Cynthia ending up in a steamy conjugal visit is meant primarily as a counterbalance to all the queer happenings behind bars (surprisingly, Priest turns out to be one of Louis's best allies, flipping the script on the way gay men are typically treated in red-meat action films of the era).

Of course, this being a Van Damme action vehicle, there are plenty of bruising fights in which the star gets to show off his abilities, often in slow motion and always from multiple angles. The film climaxes in a long, drawn-out, mano-a-mano battle in a hellish boiler room in the midst of a prison riot, which explains why the entire inmate population is able to line the walls three stories up like Thunderdome. All of this is decidedly pro forma, although director Deran Sarafian, who at that point had directed four low-budget science fiction and action films in as many years, brings a sense of visual flair to the proceedings.

Much of the film's memorable look can be attributed to Carpenter's thoughtful lighting and cinematography, which favors lots of steam, smoke, angular shadows, and some extreme teal-orange contrast. Of course, the teal-orange look soon became such an overcooked cliché that indie filmmaker and blogger Todd Miro, in his 2010 post "Teal and Orange—Hollywood, Please Stop the Madness," called it a "color grading virus." However, when Carpenter shot Death Warrant, the stylized coloring (which was achieved entirely with in-camera filtering and lighting, rather than digital color grading) gave the film a palette that differentiated it from so many other action films of the late 1980s. Although Death Warrant tends to get lost in the rush of Van Damme vehicles that flooded the market at that time, its stylized take on familiar genre riffs and gritty violence makes it, if not exactly a stand-out, at least memorable.

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