With a steely fist

Movie
German title	With a steely fist
Original title	Death Warrant
Country of production	United States
original language	English
Publishing year	1990
length	86 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
Rod
Director	Deran Sarafian
script	David S. Goyer
production	Mark DiSalle
music	Gary Chang
camera	Russell Carpenter
cut	G. Gregg McLaughlin , ; John A. Barton
occupation
	Jean-Claude Van Damme : Louis Burke; Robert Guillaume : Hawkins; Cynthia Gibb : Amanda Beckett; Patrick Kilpatrick : Christian Naylor; George Dickerson : Tom Vogler; Joshua John Miller : Douglas Tisdale; Al Leong : Bruce; Art LaFleur : Sergeant DeGraf; Armin Shimerman : Dr. Gottesman; Larry Hankin : Mayerson;

Steely Fist is an American action film from 1990 starring Belgian actor Jean-Claude Van Damme in the role of undercover cop Louis Burke.

action

Detective Louis Burke has just put the heaviest boy of his career behind bars: Christian Naylor, the serial killer feared as Sandman . Instead of a well-deserved vacation, a new assignment awaits the cop: He's supposed to get to the bottom of a series of mysterious inmate murders in Harrison Prison. Disguised as a felon, Burke is smuggled in. The lawyer Amanda Beckett accompanies him on this journey into hell. She plays his wife and is Burke's only contact with the outside world. In prison, Burke gets help from two black inmates, Hawkins and the priest. Burke discovers Harrison's gruesome secret: he has tracked down a ring of organ dealers involving doctors, inmates and guards. Burke is discovered, but no one suspects he's a cop. Amanda finds out that the prison director came up with the organ trafficking idea because his wife was in desperate need of a new heart. It was also he who had Sandman moved to Harrison to stop Burke. When Amanda Burke tries to warn, it is almost too late. A few hours separate him from freedom when Sandman is moved to the Harrison. A merciless nightmare begins for Burke, as everyone now knows that Harrison has a cop in its ranks. While fleeing from the prisoners, Hawkins is shot and the priest is killed by Sandman. In a brutal fight, Burke manages to break the neck of the Sandman and kill him. While the police are storming the prison, Burke leaves the prison and says goodbye to Hawkins, who is seriously injured and carried to an ambulance. Towards the end of the film, Burke and Amanda are in each other's arms.

Trivia

It was the third joint project between Jean-Claude Van Damme and producer Mark DiSalle .
The film grossed $ 16,853,487 in the US and $ 46,665,776 worldwide at the box office. 593,264 cinema-goers saw him in Germany.

criticism

"The mindlessly cobbled together and unambitiously filmed story serves as a mere backdrop for the main actor's cynical, brutal fight scenes."

- Lexicon of international film

"Prison thriller bursting with clichés, which Van Damme fans consider to be one of his better films."

- Cinema

“A tough action product with which superstar Jean-Claude Van Damme […] in a“ lock up ”setting underpins his exceptional position in the field of deadly strikes. In the best exploitation style, B-film specialist Deran Sarafian […] doesn't leave out any prison cliché in order to give Van Damme the chance to land hits as often as possible. The fact that the visual stylistic devices are exhausted and the logic of the plot is hardly worth mentioning will not detract from another mega-success of Van Damme, which once again attracted over half a million viewers to the cinemas, even on video. "

- kino.de