NO ESCAPE

NO ESCAPE (Directed by Martin Campbell. Starring Ray Liotta, Stuart Wilson, Lance Henriksen)

Although he has surname flashed Schwarzenneger-like across the poster, LIOTTA (no longer Ray) just doesn’t cut it as an action hero. There’s just something too damn shifty about him, which is probably why he is so often cast as a villain (psychotic in Something Wild and Unlawful Entry, swaggering in Goodfellas).

In No Escape Liotta is sent to jail, but he’s the clean-cut, wrongfully imprisoned type, called on to flex his muscles, deal violently with corruption and abuse, and ensure the title of the film is misleading. Despite the sci-fi setting (on a brutal penal colony in 2022), this is just another big, macho, high testosterone prison movie, with holes in the plot gaping enough for a whole chain gang to slip through.