FLED
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 1996 David N. Butterworth/The Summer Pennsylvanian
Directed by Kevin Hooks Rating: ** (Maltin scale)
FLED is a composite of so many other, better movies that watching it is like sitting through a montage of clips at the Oscars. You know, the kind they slap together to honor the cinematographer or costume designer or actor of the moment. While not an altogether unsatisfying experience, it leaves the viewer yearning to see the originals instead.
The obvious video rental alternative in this case is Stanley Kramer's 1958 classic THE DEFIANT ONES, which starred Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis as black 'n' white chain gang escapees on the lam in the beautiful South. Manacled together, Curtis and Poitier were a marriage made in Hollywood heaven, with both actors receiving Academy Award nominations for their pains.
This time out, the monochromatic stars are Laurence Fishburne and Stephen Baldwin. After escaping from a Georgia prison work detail, convicts Piper (Fishburne) and Dodge (Baldwin) are hounded by a no-nonsense, by-the-books U.S. Marshall (Robert John Burke), a local county sheriff (Will Patton), and the mob (nameless, collarless toughs dressed in black) as they race to recover an incriminating computer disk that could bring down the Cuban mafia.
As a fast-paced actioner, FLED is competent but little more than routine.
Director Kevin Hooks seems to have seen a few too many John Woo movies, as he strives for the same kind of explosive action sequences--in a hotel room, in a massage parlor, in a domed amphitheater--with bullets exploding through walls, pillows and people with ballistic artistry. It might be intended as homage but, like everything else about FLED, it only whets your appetite for the real McCoy.
As a snappy, rough-and-tumble buddy flick, Hooks' film isn't exactly explosive in the chemistry department. Larry Fishburne chained to all four Baldwin brothers in the "land of CNN and co'cola" ... now THAT would have been a movie to talk about!
As it is, the film's attempts at humor are largely confined to the running gag of Dodge's constant movie references: "Didn't you see 'The Fugitive'?" he observes, for example, when Piper's instinct is to head for the state line. "The first thing Tommy Lee Jones did was to set up road blocks along the border." Subsequent self-referential allusions seemed to please the captive audience but aren't any wittier.
Salma Hayek (DESPERADO) puts in an untaxing appearance as a lonely divorcee who appears to welcome the intrusion of two estranged fugitives into her house. In fact, she gives Piper her phone number before he can even get his 'cuffs off!
Executive Producer and Writer (always a bad sign) Preston A. Whitmore, II's screenplay is a hodgepodge of themes and ideas borrowed--to be kind--from THE FUGITIVE, "48 HOURS, MIDNIGHT RUN, and the LETHAL WEAPON series to name but a few. As a result, FLED is a movie whose whole is significantly less than the sum of its parts.
-- David N. Butterworth
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