MOVIE REVIEW : Engaging Stars Keep ‘Fled’ From Being Run-of-the-Mill

“Fled,” which effectively teams Laurence Fishburne and Stephen Baldwin as runaway convicts, is a successful summer diversion, the kind of film you start forgetting the moment it’s over but is fun while you’re watching it.

As a hard-action thriller it hasn’t an iota of originality, but has been directed with style and energy by Kevin Hooks from a serviceable script by Preston A. Whitmore II, who previously wrote (and directed) the awkward yet poignant “The Walking Dead,” an impassioned Vietnam War saga about an African American platoon.

Whitmore’s conventionally convoluted plot finds Fishburne’s Piper and Baldwin’s Dodge chained together a la Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis in “The Defiant Ones” when they seize the opportunity to flee a Kentucky prison work detail. What ace computer hacker Dodge doesn’t know is that when he bilked a multinational corporation of $25 million, dutifully giving $20 million to charity, he inadvertently tapped into the assets of the head of Miami’s Cuban Mafia (Michael Nader). The feds are eager to catch up with Dodge to get their hands on a computer disk containing information needed to nail Nader’s Mafioso. In short, Piper and Dodge are on the run in earnest.

Nothing happens next that you haven’t seen before time and again, but the film’s stars have been given solid characterizations, laced with humor, that engage us; needless to say, neither Piper nor Dodge is quite what he at first seems. With “Fled,” Fishburne has followed up his superb “Othello” with an action-thriller debut that could turn into an intermittent series for him. His Piper is smart, strong, reliable, a hero with a sense of humor.

Similarly, Baldwin has been able to continue to define his identity within the ranks of the acting Baldwin brothers with a likable scalawag who learns that he isn’t quite so smart as he thought he was. The smartest man in the movie, however, is an Atlanta police detective played by Will Patton with good ol’ country boy guile. It is fortuitous, to say the least, that Piper and Dodge are given shelter in Atlanta by gorgeous, witty Salma Hayek, who plays the ex-wife of a cop who conveniently left behind a key that just happens to unlock her guests’ chains.

Matthew J. Leonetti’s cinematography is properly sleek and lively, making the most of dramatic key Atlanta settings and obligatory chases and action sequences, which are sometime brutal but never lingering; at every turn the stunt work is outstanding. Graeme Revell’s score contributes strongly to maintaining the film’s driving tempo. Should you plan to see “Fled” be on the lookout for RuPaul, but then the diva of drag would be hard to miss.

* MPAA rating: R, for strong violence and language, and for some nudity. Times guidelines: The film is too violent for youngsters; the nudity occurs in a brief topless dancer scene.

‘Fled’

Laurence Fishburne: Piper

Stephen Baldwin: Dodge

Salma Hayek: Cora

Will Patton: Gibson

An MGM presentation. Director Kevin Hooks. Producer Frank Mancuso Jr. Executive producer/writer Preston A. Whitmore II. Cinematographer Matthew F. Leonetti. Editors Richard Nord, Joseph Gutowksi. Costumes Jennifer Bryan. Music Graeme Revell. Stunt coordinator John Meier. Production designer Charles Bennett. Art director Charles Breem, Set decorators Mary Stacy, Katie Pinholster. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.