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Nowhere
to Run
Directed by Robert Harmon , 1993
"Nowhere to
Run" is pretty much what you'd expect from a
Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. He's the mysterious, silent
stranger who wanders into town and reluctantly finds
himself helping a widow and mother of two save her farm
from the evil land developers, breaking as many heads as
possible along the way.
There are a few significant differences between this film
and his other action pictures, however. Van Damme's
character is more of an anti-hero, an escaped convict who
robbed a bank in his youth (though the script takes pains
to let us know he wasn't the one who shot a bank guard).
And he's pretty surly and unsympathetic in the film's
early scenes.
Also notable is that the widow is played by Rosanna
Arquette. You know you're getting old when it seems like
an anachronism to have Arquette playing a mother instead
of a daughter.
As the film opens, Van Damme is being transported on a
prison bus with other handcuffed convicts when a speeding
car cuts the bus off and it crashes on its side. Van Damme
escapes and is soon camping out in some wide-open country.
He doesn't know that it belongs to Arquette until one
night when he wanders from his campsite down to her
farmhouse and peeps in the window. He watches Arquette put
her children to bed and then sees her undress for a bath.
Then he creeps into the house and steals the salt shaker
from her kitchen. Van Damme is discovered first by
Arquette's son. He thinks the person sneaking into their
house is E.T. So, the next night, when Van Damme creeps in
to return the salt shaker, the boy follows him.
Later, Van Damme begins doing odd jobs for Arquette, who
gives him the job as thanks when he beats up a couple of
local hoods who are terrorizing her. "Poachers,"
she calls them but, of course, they are really thugs hired
by nasty generic European villain Joss Ackland, who wants
Arquette's land for a huge development project. Since she
won't sell willingly, he's trying to intimidate her with
such subtle efforts as vandalism, kidnapping and, if
necessary, murder.
As you might suspect, most of the picture has Van Damme
standing up to Ackland and his hired guns, kicking and
punching and even shooting his way out of one jam after
another. And, as you might also suspect, logic goes out
the window.
Arquette is convincing as "the girl," but this
is Van Damme's movie, of course, so when someone gets
ogled in the shower, it's him instead of her. And
"sophisticated" children talk with their mother
at the dinner table about the size of Van Damme's privates
— while he's sitting there. Right.
"Nowhere to Run" is rated R for the expected
violence and mayhem, a racy sex scene, nudity and
profanity. |
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