Directed by Martin Campbell
Written by Michael Gaylin and Joel Gross
Based on the novel "The Penal Colony" by Richard Herley
Starring Ray Liotta, Lance Henrickson, Stuart Wilson, Kevin Dillon, Michael Lerner and Ernie Hudson
As Reviewed by James Brundage (MovieKritic2000)
Ah, the wonderful world of mediocrity. That chasm between good and bad in which so many movies exist. You know where I'm talking about. It is that place where a movie is entertaining despite the fact that it is terrible. That place where it has a message but you don't care. The place where it drifts aimlessly between the fine line between a good movie and a B movie.
No Escape falls into that place.
Ironically, No Escape falls into the chasm of mediocrity and seems not to be able to escape from it. Instead, it is rather like a crab in a crab basket: its own competitive nature pulls it back in.
No Escape tries to be both a drama and an action film. In order to do this, it sets itself on a place called Absolom, an island prison some thirty years in the future where two groups constantly compete against each other for control of their jail. Looking at the highly beautiful island, I can't fathom why anyone would pick this place as a prison… but they did.
The story follows Robbins, ex Marine Force Recon who ends up in prison after shooting a CO. Being Ray Liotta, everyone is expected to root for him. I merely sit the film out. Having a high aversion to authority, he pisses the warden at the regular prison off and is sent to Absolom, the island where no one wants to go.
Let's perform a reality check here. With an island that beautiful, thirty years from now it's going to be Club Med.
But, back to the review, Robbins is sent into Absolom where he quickly encounters Merek, the villain of the story who is a psychopathic fascist leader of The Outsiders. Of course, having that same damn aversion to authority, Robbins kills several people while escaping from Merek and, after falling a thousand feet and landing in the water (on his back), he miraculously survives and is taken in by a group of kinder, gentler people known as The Insiders. The Insiders run a socialist system, good of the whole, etc. Their leader is called The Father, and is played by Lance Henrikson, who's old enough that they should have called him The Grandfather.
Everyone dreams of freedom but excepts their new life. Tensions boil between the insiders and the outsiders. War erupts. Ray Liotta saves the day.
Yada, yada, yada.
Lifted off of the pages of a sci-fi book, No Escape is your classic W.W.I.I. metaphor: Fascism versus Socialist and Democratic systems. There are spies, betrayals, and, of course, the Americans win in the end. As I said, it contains a message but no one, including me, cares.
The movie goes slowly for an action movie because it gets caught up in the pseudo drama of the moment. It tries to form characters, tries to form plot twists, and fails.
However, the small bits of character that it contains are enough to maintain your attention for roughly two hour running time… that is, along with the action sequences.
Yeah, No Escape is one of those movies you can just sit back and not really enjoy. It is a solution to boredom, a show of mediocrity. It is in the chasm, that void of movies that we will all watch if they're on.
It is in the chasm, my friends. Down at the bottom, leaning towards the bad but still edible.