Death Warrant was right on the cusp of Van Damme doing bigger movies. Bloodsport and Kickboxer were about fights. Death Warrant plugged Van Damme into a genre movie (undercover cop in prison) where naturally he would still have to fight. When Al Leong shows up in the laundry room, you know it’s on.
Double Impact would plug him into an international saga, twice, and then Universal Soldier was his bid for summer tentpoles and would be the first Van Damme I saw in theaters.
The prison gives a lot of shadow for 4K in all the cells, especially in the basement. Nut what is more surprising is all the extreme closeups that fill the screen. That’s intimidating on a big 4K TV let alone in theaters.
In 2020 interviews, Patrick Kilpatrick and Art LaFleur mostly discuss the professionalism of the film. Cynthia Gibb gets 35 minutes to discuss her entire career. It’s nice to hear that they all took Death Warrant seriously. No one was slumming it.
Lionheart also came out on 4K last month. There they found a way to combine the fight tournament with a drama. Leon (Van Damme) goes AWOL from the French Foreign Legion to visit his ailing brother and gets embroiled in underground fights to pay his way.
Not only did they find diverse fighters to oppose Leon, but they thought of all the cool locations for fights. A racquetball court, car park and the iconic empty pool were all novel.
Van Damme is in these 2018 era extras. A commentary circa 2015 on the extended cut explains the differences. But Sheldon Lettich’s new commentary is more specific and elaborate. Heath Holland is asking him specific questions but he gives more details about early Van Damme collaborations, like asking him for French profanities, and more details of the aborted Legionnaire project with Stallone.