No Escape (1994)

Plot of No Escape:  In a dystopian world in the near future (2022) a marine officer, J.T.Robbins, who has killed his commanding officer as a result of that man’s leadership during a massacre in Benghazi, is incarcerated in a maximum security prison. However he demonstrably constitutes a serious threat, at one point disabling a guard and briefly holding the prison governor hostage. As a result he is deposited in the jungle of an island, where he finds himself captured by a bunch of weirdly dressed and armed men, led by Walter Merek. Robbins escapes and after falling into a river is rescued by the members of a group known as the insiders. The other lot are the outsiders. The island is monitored by the prison authorities and guarded at sea to prevent escape. The Insiders are sort of New Age and it seems, the Outsiders have ambitions to take over their more civilised environment. However the Insider leader, Father, is dying and wants Robbins to take over, while Robbins just wants to escape from the place.

Content: No sex or nudity, and in fact, no women, but apparently no homosexuality either. Some drinking of home produced booze. The Outsiders are clad in a variety of weird costumes much in the style of Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdrome, and the whole environment is a bit like Waterworld, although this outing preceded that by a year.  There is violence. Robbins fights with some Outsiders and at one point overcomes Merek., but is often recaptured. When he returns to the Outsider camp to recover an engine part he and his one follower Casey are captured and required to fight. Casey kills himself. Merek decapitates people, once with his very sharp sword. He also has a guillotine and Robbins is only saved from beheading by a traitorous executioner. There are battles between to two groups and the involvement of the prison governor.

A View: This outing just covered its production costs at the box office, and back in the 1990s films did not require quite the same level of publicity that they do today, so the producers probably breathed a sigh of relief. Ray Liotta, a bit out of his usual metier, did a pretty good job, but he alone could not make the film a success. While a lot of effort had gone into clothing the Outsiders everything else seemed to be a bit lukewarm. Robbins was not really a superhero, Merek was not sufficiently evil and no-one else really made an impact. So not really a watch even for nothing.  There are 57 dystopian future films on this site. Choose another one.

Fun Fact: It is said that Ray Liotta only smiles four times in the whole film.