An action-packed b-movie that takes itself way too seriously, which is what makes NO ESCAPE great fun as Ray Liotta's only in an actual futuristic Fascist-future prison for a brief time, ironic since it's a prison-genre flick that takes place on a penal island like PAPILLON following the do-or-die rules and ragged costume design of THE ROAD WARRIOR...
Genuinely cool and fit, Liotta is, of course, the toughest and strongest and a completely handy stranger in a fortress world run by a passive yet formidable Lance Henriksen, polar opposite of British actor Stuart Wilson ruling the woodsy outskirts, whose insanely overboard, monologue-spouting dictator makes Dennis Hopper's WATERWORLD performance seem tame (and all but drowns out the prison's computer-monitor-monitoring warden Michael Lerner)...
Barking orders at his natives while making threatening jokes like a sarcastic game show host at an unflinching Liotta in one of the post GOODFELLAS leading roles, maybe the reason why Liotta never became a really huge star, here in what almost resembles a Straight-to-Video flick...
Which really isn't such a bad thing since, for better or worse, you'll wanna stick around to find out if the film's title is really true: because the one thing the director's able to convey is that Liotta... alongside dependable sidekick Ernie Hudson, token doomed naive kid Kevin Dillon, token offbeat favor-man Kevin J. O'Connor and shifty turncoat Ian McNiece... are genuinely stuck in one helluva pickle.
Genuinely cool and fit, Liotta is, of course, the toughest and strongest and a completely handy stranger in a fortress world run by a passive yet formidable Lance Henriksen, polar opposite of British actor Stuart Wilson ruling the woodsy outskirts, whose insanely overboard, monologue-spouting dictator makes Dennis Hopper's WATERWORLD performance seem tame (and all but drowns out the prison's computer-monitor-monitoring warden Michael Lerner)...
Barking orders at his natives while making threatening jokes like a sarcastic game show host at an unflinching Liotta in one of the post GOODFELLAS leading roles, maybe the reason why Liotta never became a really huge star, here in what almost resembles a Straight-to-Video flick...
Which really isn't such a bad thing since, for better or worse, you'll wanna stick around to find out if the film's title is really true: because the one thing the director's able to convey is that Liotta... alongside dependable sidekick Ernie Hudson, token doomed naive kid Kevin Dillon, token offbeat favor-man Kevin J. O'Connor and shifty turncoat Ian McNiece... are genuinely stuck in one helluva pickle.