Nowhere to Run (1993)

How sad is this?

Don't listen to the negative reviews

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

This is what I consider a good Van Damme flick. The story has been told many times. It is similar in many respects to Romeo Must Die - evil developer wants to put up a kitzy development and needs to run off small landowners. Clydie (Rosanna Arquette) resists and her deputy dawg boyfriend (Edward Blatchford) is playing both sides. In comes the hard-ass to get things finished (a very young Ted Levine) and, at the same time our hero breaks out of prison and camps on her doorstep. It seems Van Damme is always either breaking out of prison or going AWOL. Relationships with her two cute kids begin and then things really heat up with mom. Boyfriend is jealous and it all comes to a head, as expected, between Van EDamme and Levine. Smaltzy ending, but great chases. fights, and lots of passion.

***SPOILER*** Jean-Claude Van Damme is disbarred lawyer and escaped convict Sam Gillen who's partner in crime Billy, Anthony Starke, he took the rap for in gunning down a bank guard that he's now serving a life sentence for. Billy grateful for what Sam did for him attempts to free him from a prison bus. This leads to Billy's death in him getting shot from behind while he and Sam were making their escape in Billy's getaway car.Now all alone with the heat, police & state troopers, bearing down on him Sam makes his way to the far off Anderson farm and wait for things to cool off. It's also there where he and Billy hid the loot from their last and final bank robbery. At first Sam spends his time sneaking in and out of the Anderson house looking for food and salt & pepper shakers to give his cooked bland and tasteless stakes, from the game he hunts down, some flavor. It's also when stealing the houses condiments that Sam runs into Mookie, Kieran Culkin, the son of the lady of the house widowed Clydie Anderson, Rosanne Arquette. Mookie who's father died when he was an infant looks up to the strapping and handsome Sam as a father figure to play baseball as well as go out hunting and fishing with. At first planning to get the buried bank money and scram to parts unknown with it before the police and state troopers get a bead on him Sam decides to make himself at home at the Anderson place while planning his next move. That's until Sam finds out that big time land developer Franklin Hale, Joss Ackland, and his paid goons headed by a Mr. Duston, Ted Levine, want to run Clydie together with her son Mookie and daughter Bree, Tiffany Tabman, out of their home and build a high rise condo in its place! With Clydie refusing to sign her home and farm away to the greedy and evil Franklin Hale he gets Duston & Co. to tighten the screws on her! This has Sam who's now a permanent resident as well as Clydie's new boyfriend a bit ticked off to say the least!Other complications soon arrive in the relationship between Sam & Clydie in that her former boyfriend and protector from Franklin Hale & Co. local Sheriff Lonnie Cole, Edward Blatchford, who's actually on Franklin Hale's payroll gets a bit jealous in Sam taking Clydie away from him. Sam seeing all the trouble that he's causing and that it's only a matter of time that his criminal past is discovered by the local police, as well as Franklin Hale, takes off in his, which he bought from Clydie for $300.00, newly restored 1969 650cc Triumh T-120 Bonneville motorcycle only to be chased down by what looks like an army of police and state troopers on foot car horseback and even helicopter. Making his way back to the Anderson place Sam gets there just in time before Hale and his goons lead by his security and torture specialist Duston brutally work Clydie and her kids over in order to force her sign her house and farm away to him.***SPOILERS**** Sam who just about had enough of living on the lamb from the law and is more then willing to pay from his crime as a bank robber, Billy in a tape that he made before he was killed exonerated Sam in the bank guard killing, goes all out against Hale and his goons even with the the entire state police force and state troopers hot on his tail! Before he's finally arrested, by Sheriff Cole no less, Sam does a number on Hale & Co. especially Mr.Duston who was itching to have it out with him during the entire film. By the time the movie was over Duston if he were still alive & conscious realized that was a Big Big Big mistake on his part!

The ridiculously low rating on IMDb at the time of this posting (5.0) aside, this has long been in my opinion the highest quality of all of Van Damme's flicks. By highest quality I don't mean best fight scene, most over the top cheesy premise, best gore, or anything else. I mean best quality as in an actual quality movie that just happened to star Jean Claude Van Damme.The cinematography in the movie is excellent, so is the score, and in a real rarity in a Van Damme movie, so for the most part is the acting. Rosanna Arquette plays damsel in distress without ever being weak or pathetic and injects a nice touch of forlorn longing into it, the younger Culkin turns in one of the better child performances you are likely to see from an 8-9 year old, and they get two nice performances from the main baddies, who play evil as steely eyed rather than screaming slobbering over the top. And of course the biggest surprise is Van Damme himself, who probably gave the best performance of his career, although that is both faint praise and I think at least in part because he found a role where his character not emoting fit perfectly.This is not a 10, although I must admit to being tempted to give it one as part of the stupid IMDb pump the ratings of a film you liked game. The plot is largely derivative of a number of old westerns (Shane comes to mind), the action sequences are fine but not thrilling (I think a large part of the low rating comes from disappointed action junkies), and in general this is a movie aiming lower than a 10 as I would define it. Its trying to be good, not great, but don't let the naysayers confuse you -- it largely succeeds, and is perhaps the only Van Damme movie you can watch (even the entertaining ones) that does not leave cheese dripping down the screen. Solid entertainment.

15 years ago, a group of producers were planning a MOVIE. This MOVIE would star JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME and would be an ACTION THRILLER. Of course, because of it's PEDIGREE all original thinking would be THROWN OUT OF THE WINDOW. You see, you can never OVERESTIMATE THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE AVERAGE ACTION MOVIE FAN. They don't want myriad PLOTS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CHARACTERS. No, they want THE MUSCLES FROM BRUSSELS KICKING SOME ASS.So, they drew up a little template that would NOT ONLY FORM THE BASIS OF EVERY FUTURE VAN DAMME FLICK, but would also be COPIED BY COUNTLESS OTHER CHOP SOCKY PRODUCTIONS, especially those of the STRAIGHT TO VIDEO VARIETY. Till now, this proved formula has been A CLOSELY GUARDED SECRET. Just like the recipe of the KRABBY PATTY. Having watched Nowhere to Run though, I think I can take a pretty good stab at CRACKING THE CODE. So here it is. Sorry, studios:1. Think of a stupid title. For a start our hero can escape anytime he wants, plus he rides a restored motorcycle for half the film.. so why would he want to 'run' anywhere?2. Give Van Damme a shady past, something he's not proud of (in this case, being an escaped convict involved in bank robberies), and then halfway through have him blurt out his crime to the love of his life. She immediately rejects him, but decides he's not so bad when he redeems himself by beating up the men who are trying to kill her. As you do.3. Write in two cute kids who see Jean as a father figure, as they lost theirs due to a heart attack. They must be a boy and a girl. The girl has to carry a teddy bear everywhere and shout "MOMMY" a lot the boy has to be spunky and resourceful, even saving our hero's life at one point. Like it or not, he becomes a surrogate father to the little nippers. Bless!4. If the main protagonist does get injured in the course of all his brawling, then don't worry. Put away the medkit, because in the very next scene, the nastiest of cuts will completely disappear! It'll be like nothing happened to him! What a relief!5. The chief villain must be a old dude, wearing a posh suit and with an English accent. All throughout the movie, he has a seemingly endless stream of underlings to do his dirty work for him, but when they're reduced to rubble by The Muscles he should go completely nuts and wave a gun around. Of course this tactic also fails, and the damn Limey is arrested or killed. Phew!6. The hero's love interest should have a rival for her affections who hates him and even sides with the bad guys temporarily to get him out of the picture. He soon as he sees how ruthless these dudes are though, and comes to his senses. He even congratulates the hero on a job well done at the end as he's surrounded by dead bodies. So he was a stand-up guy after all!! 7. Have the fight over something completely worthless, like a derelict old farmhouse, that most people would quite happily sell at a profit. One lady though, ain't budging because of it's 'sentimental' value and she'll even tolerate thugs killing her cattle and threatening her life with hooks to keep this ramshackle property. It's in a way of a huge development, you see. Will Van Damme risk his life over this belligerent bint? Your bet your..8. Make full use of your setting. Because this particular film is set in a farm (see 7), in the fight scenes have Van Damme and his opponent use rakes, pitchforks and whatever else happens to be lying around as weapons. But of course, nothing beats the good old uppercut, even if it does take about 10 of them to knock the bad guys over. Hmm.. Maybe The Muscles isn't as strong as we thought.9. Don't forget The Gratuitous Shower Scene (TM). If you can squeeze in a Gratuitous Sex Scene (TM), even better.10. Put in a bunch of second rate John McClane style one-liners to try and give the hero some personality. Examples: 'Au Revior F***er' as he shoots dead an evil henchman, and "No, but I know what you are" when the Brit bad guy (See 5) asks "Do you know who I am?!" Shakespeare it ain't.So to sum it up then: a BOG STANDARD ACTION MOVIE with no bells and whistles, but plenty of Van Damme TAKING NO PRISONERS AND KICKING BUTT. You even get to see HIS at one point. Tee hee. In the pantheon to JCVD films, I would recommend STREETFIGHTER and TIMECOP above this, but if you've WATCHED EVERY OTHER ONE OF HIS CLASSICS then this might be just what the doctor ordered. A HEAD DOCTOR, anyway. Brainless fun, nothing more. 4/10 P.S This review has been especially designed for action genre fans with short attention spans. All important words have been CAPITILISED, so you can just scan through it quickly before getting back to The Last Boy Scout. Hope you appreciate it!