Directed by: Robert Harmon
Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Rosanna Arquette, Kieran Culkin, Tiffany Taubman, Joss Ackland, and Ted Levine
Clydie (Arquette) is an
attractive widow trying to raise her two kids, Mookie (Culkin) and Bree
(Tiffany Taubman) on their family farm. Sam (Van Damme) is a mysterious
prison escapee living on their land in a tent. Over time, Sam endears
himself to the family, especially because the young Mookie is
desperately searching for a father figure after the death of his own
dad. Sam couldn’t have come along at a better time, because classic evil
land baron Franklin Hale (Ackland) wants to take Clydie’s land and
build a multi-million dollar development. So naturally he sends out his
goons of various stripes to muscle the farm away. But not on Sam’s
watch. Will Sam join Clydie’s fam? Or will yet another megalomaniacal
land developer develop a way to keep them apart?
Ah yes, let’s take a trip down memory lane...it wasn’t so long ago that every Van Damme (and even Seagal movie, as hard as that is to believe now) went to the movie theater. JCVD had yet to become synonymous with DTV, and this film is quite mainstream. It has a highly polished, theater-ready look and feel. But because, after all, it’s still a Van Damme action movie, it’s still dumb and Van Damme has a ton of silly one liners that really don’t even make any sense.
Ah yes, let’s take a trip down memory lane...it wasn’t so long ago that every Van Damme (and even Seagal movie, as hard as that is to believe now) went to the movie theater. JCVD had yet to become synonymous with DTV, and this film is quite mainstream. It has a highly polished, theater-ready look and feel. But because, after all, it’s still a Van Damme action movie, it’s still dumb and Van Damme has a ton of silly one liners that really don’t even make any sense.
Really, he just seems confused. In just about every scene, whether he be peeping into Rosanna Arquette’s window as she takes a bath, cooks a steak in the rural wilderness while wearing a suit, or just chillin’ in his pup tent with the latest issue of Top Heavy magazine, Van Damme seems oddly off-kilter in his performance. But that doesn’t stop him from showing his (presumably male) audience his time-honored unnecessary and un-asked for nudity. Rather than yet another eyeball-rolling shot of his naked butt, what this movie really needed was more goons for him to fight, more action scenes, and just more fight scenes in general. This is Van Damme here, after all.
Nowhere To Run also needed more verve and a streamlined plot. And what goons there are happen to be not evil enough. They should have done something REALLY evil and then Sam could go after them on a no-holds-barred revenge mission. That would have been awesome. Unfortunately however, this is run-of-the-mill Van Damme with few surprises. (Although what surprises remain are pretty good). The plot of the mysterious stranger that comes to a ranch to protect a family from the no-good-niks in town is ground well-covered since the days of the earliest Westerns, and Van Damme playing Monopoly with 2 kids and a song by Damn Yankees tacked on the soundtrack doesn’t really add much new to the old formula.
One more thing: Without any spoiler, let us just say this: the ending is UNBELIEVABLY lame. It’s one of the lamest - if not THE lamest ending to an action movie we’ve ever seen. The movie itself isn’t nearly good enough to justify or counterbalance such a disappointing ending. It’s not like “whoa, that movie was awesome, so, okay, we forgive how much the ending sucks.” No. The ending just sucks, period. It drags the whole movie - everything we’ve just seen and invested in - down.
Nowhere To Run is standard (actually, probably below-standard) Van Damme fare and despite a few bright spots, it’s really nothing to get too excited about.
Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty
