YMMV / Marked for Death

The film:

• Anti-Climax Boss: Screwface #1. After Hatcher kicks sand in his face, he delivers a sudden Groin Attack, then chops off his head. Their sword "fight" takes no more than thirty seconds.
• Complete Monster: Screwface is a feared Jamaican crime boss rumored to have supernatural powers. Known to savagely murder anyone who he feels crosses him, Screwface has the members of a rival gang shot up in an occupied bar by his men and later murders with his own hands the woman who helped the gang's leader. When retired cop John Hatcher subdues one of his men, Screwface orders a hit on him and his entire family, succeeding in almost fatally wounding his young niece and stripping and marking his sister Tracy for death in her own home. Screwface continues to mercilessly torment Hatcher, attempting to burn him alive and vowing never to stop until his entire family is dead. Screwface uses murder, sacrifice, and immoral drug trade through his posse, and his cruelty is so immense his own minions prefer suicide rather than confronting him for their failures.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Rita, the Femme Fatale Santeria priestess who casts a spell on Screwface on behalf of his A Lighter Shade of Black rival, is one of the most memorable characters despite only having two or three scenes.
  • Jamaican cop Charles has fewer scenes than some of the other protagonists, but is viewed as a pretty colorful and interesting character nonetheless.
• Fridge Logic: How did Hatcher get a severed head through airport security?
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Danny Trejo makes his film debut as an informant killed in the first fifteen minutes. Twenty years later, Trejo would finally get a leading role in Machete... in which Steven Seagal plays the Big Bad.
• Narm:
  • Screwface's Cosby sweater.
  • Crossed with Special Effects Failure, the climactic fight has an obvious dummy starting when Hatcher knees Screwface's back.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Tracey does little in the movie besides welcoming John home, getting wounded for Collateral Angst in a shooting, and spending the rest of the film in the hospital. Given how she is played by Danielle Harris, fresh off her role as Jamie Lloyd, The Woobie in the fourth and fifth Halloween movies and only a year away from her role as Badass Adorable Darian in The Last Boy Scout, there is a definite sense that her character could have been given a lot more scenes while showing spunk and/or realistic trauma as her family is placed in danger.

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