FuzzyTagz
If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
BelSports
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
Brennan Camacho
Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.
matatosky
I got this on DVD at Walmart. It came with "The Order", which is a strange but fun change of pace for Van Damme and "The Shepherd" which is not too bad for what it was. This triple feature came at me for 5 bucks, so naturally I had to get it. My main reason for getting it was Nowhere to Run. I hadn't seen this movie since the 90's and after that it fell into obscurity, considering JCVD released better quality in films. The movie takes place in a shanty town that apparently wanted to try too hard to look rural. It's not a bad setting but it made the movie somehow look dull. (That plus the lack of a good score, which was basically absent through most of the film's better scenes) After movies like "Lionheart" and "Bloodsport" where Van Damme looked incredible as the good hearted hero, in this one, he tries to be and look rugged for his convict persona. Included the stubble he rarely grew in movies back then and the laid back but heavy foreign accent. It definitely seemed like he was into his part but he drops subtle signs of weakness in his acting, like for example, when he intentionally mispronounces the word 'Motorcycle' and his delivery of obligatory 90s action movie one liners. Only good thing about his performance, is he didn't pull any fancy moves. He kept it brawling and I liked that. I'm a JCVD fan for life, but this movie is one of the reasons why I get when some people dislike him. Moving on to the supporting cast, Rosanna Arquette and Kieran Culkin did great as mother and son who take kind to a random drifter. The chemistry between the 2 of them wasn't any better at mom and son than it was for JCVD and Rosanna (whom according to interviews, disliked working with Van Damme) Ted Levine is always fun to watch and actually menacing in his role. In fact, I can't really remember a role where Ted Levine was rubbish, because even in "Flubber' he delivered some great scenes that combined his tough guy act and his comedic timing. The movie is simple enough, with some good decent fight sequences thrown in between. The story could've used some more development, like for example: some retrospective scenes where it showed Van Damme's failed bank robbery or his aforementioned marriage, so it would have made Van Damme's character a bit more sympathetic because you just end up feeling sorry for the poor family caught in between his story and the film's plot. Im pretty sure, this was a movie that was still polishing his acting skills and expanding his resumé as a leading action star but there were definitely better ones. Not bad at all. Fun little movie to watch when you want to snack on something at 2am and be amused while you're at it. But if you really wanna get into his movies, I wouldn't suggest this as your first one.
movieman_kev
Jean-Claude Van Damme is Sam Gillen an escaped con who happens upon the farm of Clyde, a single mother who's house is in jeopardy of being bulldozed by a real estate developer. He spends his time peeping in on her showering, stealing salt and butting heads with her boyfriend whom she nonchalantly lies to all the time, before he helps her with her hired goon problem.Annoying kids notwithstanding, this film, while not nearly as good as I fondly remembered it as a kid, is an energetic enough time waister for a lazy Saturday afternoon.Eye Candy: Rosanna Arquette gets fully nude
Mike Garcia
I've always been a great fan of this film, I really think is underrated just because is starred by the the action star Jean Claude Van Damme,who had proved that he can be a competent actor.NOWHERE TO RUN IS ONE OF HIS BEST WORKS, a very well done film, with great performances, very good story and a really good soundtrack..it has action scenes that are all really good made,but in this film are different than other Van Damme movies, I would say that here the fights are more realistic according with the story but some jean claude fans can be disappointed, I am a big Van Damme fan and I was not disappointed at all, I really believe Van Damme needs more movies like this or the legionarie, JCVD,in hell to silence his critics...A GREAT FILM
Comeuppance Reviews
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. 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.
