Marked for Death (1990)
Marked for Death is a 1990 American action film directed by Dwight H. Little. The film stars Steven Seagal as John Hatcher, a former DEA troubleshooter who returns to his Illinois hometown to find it taken over by a gang of vicious Jamaican drug dealers led by Screwface. Using a combination of fear and Obeah, a Jamaican syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin similar to Haitian vodou and Santería, Screwface rules the drug trade in Hatcher’s Lincoln Heights.
Plot.
Chicago Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent and decorated soldier John Hatcher returns from Colombia, where drug dealers killed his partner Chico, and John killed the dealers. As a result of Chico’s death and years of dead end work, Hatcher retires and heads to his family’s home town of Lincoln Heights, in suburban Chicago. He visits the local school to meet old friend and former U.S. Army buddy Max Keller who works there as a football coach and physical education teacher. As John and Max celebrate their reunion at a club, a gunfight breaks out between local drug dealers and a Jamaican gang at the venue. The gang, an unnamed Jamaican Posse, is led by a notorious psychotic drug lord named Screwface. John arrests one of Screwface’s henchmen as the gunfight ends. News of Posse crimes occurring in Chicago and across the United States spread as the Posse expands its operations and recruits more members. The next day, Screwface sends his henchmen to do a drive-by shooting on the house where John, his sister Melissa, and Melissa’s 12-year-old daughter Tracey live. Tracey is injured and hospitalized in critical condition.
In the subsequent investigation, John encounters a gangster named Jimmy Fingers, whom he is forced to kill. A Jamaican gangster named Nesta arrives and is subdued by John, who asks about Screwface. Nesta gives information but tells him to go after Screwface alone and jumps out the window to his death. The next day, John discovers a strange symbol engraved on a carpet, and with the help of Jamaican voodoo and gang expert Leslie Davalos, a detective for the Chicago Police Department, learns that it is an African black magic ideogram symbolizing blood that is used to mark their crimes. John decides to come out of retirement to join Max in a battle against Screwface.
On the night of their rendezvous, John gets a phone call from Melissa, which is cut short when Screwface and his men invade the Hatcher household. They leave upon John’s arrival, and Melissa is unharmed. The next day, John and Max encounter another batch of Screwface’s henchmen, resulting in a car chase. The chase ends in a high-end jewelry store, wherein two henchmen are wounded and one is killed by Hatcher amidst the chaos of shoppers fleeing the scene.
Production.
Steven Seagal had wanted to hire director Dwight Little for his second feature, Hard to Kill, but studio Warner Bros. vetoed his choice, and went with Bruce Malmuth instead. According to Little, Seagal had the option in his contract with Warner to do one film with another studio. Seagal chose to exercise that option and make his third film at 20th Century Fox, where he demanded that they hire Little for Marked for Death. “I got that job only because Steven insisted,” said Little. During production, the studio was pushing for more humor in the film, but Little and Seagal had made a pact to resist these attempts. Their template for the film was The French Connection. On the third day of shooting Marked for Death, Hard to Kill came out in theaters. Dwight Little: “It opened huge, and it stayed on top for a while. No one, including Steven, thought that was going to be success. But it was. Frankly, just based on his charisma and a couple of good action scenes. I was downtown shooting a scene for Marked for Death when suddenly I see all these limos and towncars coming to the set. They were all CAA-agents and producers, coming out of the woodwork to see the next big action guy. They all wanted to talk to him.”