NO ESCAPE
A Film Review by Michael J. Legeros
Copyright 1994 Michael J. Legeros
Director Martin Campbell
Writers Michael Gaylin, Joel Gross and based on Richard Herley's
book THE PENAL COLONY
Cast Ray Liotta, Lance Henriksen, Stuart Wilson, Kevin Dillon,
Ian McNeice, Jack Shepard, Michael Lerner, and Ernie
Hudson
MPAA Rating "R" (presumably for v-i-o-l-e-n-c-e)
Running Time 118 Minutes
===
"Prisons have become big business." - Title card explaining imprisonment in the year 2022.
Cross MAD MAX with LORD OF THE FLIES and you've got the idea behind NO ESCAPE, a lousy prison-in-a-jungle pic. from producer-who-knows-better Gale Anne Hurd (ALIENS, THE ABYSS).
The story introduces Robbins (Ray Liotta), a Marine captain con- victed of murder and sent up the river and across the ocean to an island penal colony with no guards and one rule: stay alive. This "resort community" is controlled by two warring factions: the savage Outsiders (led by soft-spoken Stuart Wilson) and the peaceful Insiders (led by softer-spoken Lance Henriksen). But Robbins, who has a genetically traced problem with authority, doesn't want in on either..
For about thirty minutes, NO ESCAPE is the perfect tonic to a sans action spring. The locales are lush, the premise is punchy, and Liotta is the last action hero we'd expect to be engaging. The man can act and his early scenes with Wilson, who plays the lively leader of the Outsiders, have a nice, lazy charm.
Watch a staged fight between Robbins and "Ralph, our director of athletic activities" for a friendly nod to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.
Once our hero goes outside the Outsiders (and inside the Insiders), the plot machinery grinds to a halt and NO ESCAPE becomes just that. Robbins spends the rest of the film seeking salvation in a ramshackle village that looks a little too much like GILLIGAN'S ISLAND to be taken seriously.
There are a couple of brief battles to break up the monotony, but director Martin Campbell doesn't do very well with any more than three people fighting at one time. He's better than, say, Kevin Reynolds, but not the *best* talent to effectively tingle the testosterone.
The gore is pretty good, though. Watch for a dandy beheading and a *great* impaling.
NO ESCAPE stars no women (!) and, considering the number of men shown in close quarters, could use a stronger sexual subtext to be believable. But this is Hollywood and Gale Anne Hurd *already* has a pretty large set of cojones.
BOTTOM LINE: NO ESCAPE is a lousy prison-in-a-jungle pic. that's
worth watching for all of thirty minutes.
Grade: D+
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews