No Escape

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Year:	1994
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Martin Campbell
Genre:	Futuristic dullness
Starring:	Ray Liotta, Lance Henriksen, Stuart Wilson, Kevin Dillon, Don Henderson
Rating:	1/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110678/
Tagline:	No guards. No walls. No escape.
Favourite line:	None worth mentioning

Futuristic action flick is the promise.
Sometimes, trailers lie.

The plot:
Cold-hearted murderer and general ne’er-do-well Robbins (Ray Liotta) is thrown into a maximum security facility. It’s the year 2022.
The prison governor, being a foolish sort, attempts to get Robbins to lash a fellow prisoner, a form of humiliation designed to ‘break’ him, to force servitude, but Robbins has other ideas, and attempts to kill the fucker instead. But he’s surrounded by guards.
Considered unalterable, Robbins is carted off to another arm of the prison, the island of Absalom, where the worst of the worst dwell.
200 miles from the nearest land, Absalom is run without guards, the prisoners left to fend for themselves; to live off the land.
Surviving an initial encounter with some post-apocalyptic sorts who seem to have escaped from a Mad Max movie – The Outsiders – Robbins finds himself holed up in a fenced off community, where he is assured there is No Escape.
Inevitably Robbins thinks otherwise…..

Starting off promisingly, with the general feel of Kristoff Camembert vehicle Fortress – a simply brilliant cult classic – this quickly loses its way, jolting from futuristic setting to primitive forest dwellers in less time than it takes to slip on a loincloth.
And it’s downhill from there.
Clocking in at a punishing two hours – and you feel every fucking second – this could have been a kitschy slice of exploitative goodness, if not for the prolonged character building sequences and massively misplaced attempts at humour. As funny as forcing chilli powder down a recently sandpapered urethral opening, moments that are meant to make you laugh actually leave you squirming in agony.
Ray ‘2 films’ Liotta is decent enough in the lead role, though seems awkward, somehow, as if he knows that this was really intended for Schwarzenegger until he got someone else to read the script to him, nothing here really convinces, nothing feels right.
A well-trodden path in terms of misfiring sci-fi is the role of the primitive – think Star Trek, think Blake’s Seven, think Doctor Who – and it is either an act of bravery or pure folly to try it once more, but off they go all the same.
Had reasonably high hopes for this, despite the poor reviews - sci-fi always gets poor reviews. Look at this year's John Carter. Great fun. Lambasted - and the fact that Martin ‘Vertical Limit’, ‘The Mask of Zorro’, ‘The Green Lantern’ Campbell directed it - quite the master of mediocrity it seems - but, no, the reviews got it right.
Shame.