Movie Review : ‘No Escape’ From the Violence

“I’m not a joiner,” says imprisoned Marine Capt. John Robbins (Ray Liotta) in “No Escape,” and that’s an understatement. After assassinating his commanding officer in the very first scene, Robbins is dispatched to a maximum security prison and then, still bucking the authorities, dumped by the don’t-mess-with-me warden (Michael Lerner) into the ultimate prison--a jungle peninsula called Absolom, 200 miles from civilization. He’s not much of a joiner there either.

You can’t really blame him. Half the peninsula is occupied by the Outsiders, a band of 600 or so really grody guys, led by the snickery, very hairy Marek (Stuart Wilson). These convicts have gone tribal in a big way--they decapitate each other for sport, bare their tonsils in bloodcurdling yells and never, ever floss.

Robbins, by comparison, is a GQ model, and so it’s not long before he does a back flip into raging waterfalls, which brings him into contact with the Insiders. (This flipping into raging torrents must be the latest thing: You half expect Robbins to collide in the rapids with “The Fugitive’s” Richard Kimble.) The Insiders, led by a haunted-looking ex-surgeon known as the Father (Lance Henriksen), are a comparatively peaceful brood of convicts numbering less than 100; they weave and grow vegetables and ready themselves for periodic assaults from the Outsiders. Robbins could be an asset to them--he is, after all, the only guy ever to escape from the Outsiders--but he just wants out.

Robbins the loner individualist is, of course, a good guy camouflaged by a scowl and an attitude. He’s a natural leader, as opposed to all the unnatural Outsider types. There’s a brotherhood-of-man morality play lurking in all this underbrush, but it’s best not to peer too closely. Pulp is best digested raw. (But not too raw: There is not a single woman on the entire peninsula, but the film is surprisingly chaste about any suggestion of male coupling.) It’s clear that director Martin Campbell doesn’t have the same feeling for the Insiders as he does for the Outsiders. The spectacle of virtuousness seems to curdle his movie-making instincts; it doesn’t galvanize the Mad Max in his soul. And so we in the audience are placed in the same wait-and-see position as the Insiders bracing for another attack--except that we look forward to it.

Movie bad guys always seem to take up more space on the screen than good guys. Besides the Father, the Insiders include a jumbo-size security chief (Ernie Hudson), an inventor (Jack Shepherd) who is sort of like a jungle version of Q in the James Bond series, and a youthful, scared-stiff kidnaper (Kevin Dillon) who looks up to Robbins. None of them can hold a candle to the gross-out bullyboys from the wrong side of the falls. Stuart Wilson, in particular, is so amusingly vile as Marek that he positively glistens with dementia.

Which is not to say that spending a few hours with all their yelling and puncturing and head-rolling is any great time either. “No Escape” will appeal primarily to people who thought “The Road Warrior” was a tad too intellectual. Except for all the brains it spills, it could qualify as the archetypal no-brainer.

* MPAA rating: R, for a considerable amount of strong violence and some language . Times guidelines: It includes virtually nonstop graphic violence.

‘No Escape’

Ray Liotta: Robbins

Lance Henriksen: The Father

Stuart Wilson: Marek

Kevin Dillon: Casey

A Savoy Pictures release. Director Martin Campbell. Producer Gale Anne Hurd. Executive producer Jake Eberts. Screenplay by Michael Gaylin and Joel Gross. Cinematographer Phil Meheux. Editor Terry Rawlings. Costumes Norma Moriceau. Music Graeme Revell. Production design Allan Cameron. Set decorator Lesley Crawford. Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.