Simply Perfect

Don't Believe the Hype

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Imagine a version of those classic prison movies - PAPILLON, THE GREAT ESCAPE, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION - updated violently into a futuristic setting and what you'll have is FORTRESS, a gung-ho ride full to the brim of action. And it's a blast. The feel of the film is very similar to that of TOTAL RECALL, and the pair are almost companion pieces. While relatively low budget, the film has something rarely seen these days - imagination! What makes the film so enjoyable to horror aficionados is firstly the talent involved, and secondly the level of extreme violence which certainly spices up the action. Since when did you see one of the prisoners in THE GREAT ESCAPE have his stomach blown out? Christopher Lambert will never win any awards for acting but he is a solid enough presence as the film's hero and his wooden acting is on par with other luminaries like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Doug McClure, how we love them all. And really he is given little to do except fight one thing after another, which of course he does with relish.Locklin brings warmth and compassion to the film as his wife and shows probably the best acting in the entire film, but since when did we watch these kinds of films for acting anyway? Kurtwood Smith steals the overacting awards as the oily prison head, strangely his toupee makes him look years younger. Although this isn't the nastiest, best performance of his career (that honour goes to ROBOCOP), he makes for a compassionate villain, a man with a longing for love.A motley bunch make up Lambert's cellmates, which include a wise old black guy, Tom Towles (the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD remake) bringing cult value as a brutal thug type, while horror star Jeffrey Combs is virtually unrecognisable underneath thick glasses and long hair. Still, it's not really the acting talent that makes this film so enjoyable, or the plot, which is as I said is merely an updated version of the old escape films. The set design is excellent, and the various mechanical hazards, including the roving cameras and laser beams, the psychedelic dream sequences and also the androids, while tacky, are all great fun. Weirdness prevails when an android's helmet is removed, revealing the rubbery, half-human face underneath! The main gore highlights are the intestinators, kind of like an updated ALIEN chestburster for the 1990s, and they are literally showstoppers. We haven't seen this kind of gut busting since the cheapo days of CONTAMINATION! Added to this are a man who has his chest literally blown out, an extraordinarily bloody fight scene (probably the bloodiest I've ever witnessed on screen, as people's heads are smashed into walls, bars, etc. and spray and pour blood like a low-rent Bruce Willis from the DIE HARD series), a man ripping out his own eyes, and lots of shooting and chests erupting with bullet holes.The bookend to the film, a pyrotechnic stunt involving an exploding truck, is also done very well. FORTRESS certainly was never likely to win any Oscars, but the non-stop action, cheesy dialogue and inventive situations, all presided over by steadfast direction from Stuart Gordon (RE-ANIMATOR), make this one hell of a bloody roller-coaster ride. The prison movie to end all prison movies in the cheesy B-movie fan's mind.

"Fortress" is mostly routine, but enjoyable, futuristic sci-fi from director Stuart Gordon (of "Re-Animator" and "From Beyond" fame). It has an excellent cast of familiar faces that make the most out of what they've got, especially Kurtwood Smith ("RoboCop", 'That 70s Show'). There are acceptable levels of violence and gore, the production design and lighting are adequate, and Gordon does a very fine job with pacing and energy level. The producers originally wanted Arnold Schwarzenegger as the star, but he went on to do "True Lies" instead (it was Ah-nuld that suggested Gordon as the director of this feature).Some interesting ideas are present in this tale of a husband and wife, John and Karen (Christopher Lambert and Loryn Locklin) who are expecting their second child, despite the fact that the law now forbids couples from having more than one kid. (They tried again because the first child was born dead.) They're caught and sentenced to do time at the "Fortress", a massive, multi leveled high tech prison. It's run by your standard issue sadistic warden, a man named Poe (Mr. Smith). John, forced into an overcrowded cell, makes plans with his cellmates to escape, although this place is supposed to be escape-proof.Lambert is no better or worse than he usually is. Locklin is reasonably appealing. The supporting cast is pretty eclectic: Lincoln Kilpatrick ("Chosen Survivors", Renny Harlins' "Prison") as Abraham, Jeffrey Combs of the "Re-Animator" series (rocking a shoulder length wig here) as D-Day, Clifton Collins Jr. ("Tigerland", "Pacific Rim") as Gomez, Tom Towles ("House of 1000 Corpses", "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer") as Stiggs, and Vernon Wells ("The Road Warrior", "Commando") as Maddox. That's Gordons' actress wife Carolyn supplying the voice of the computer intelligence Zed-10. Smith, whose character will have some surprises in store, is an effective and not completely one-dimensional antagonist."Fortress" hits the ground running, and offers decent entertainment for a fairly trim 95 minute run time.Seven out of 10.

2017, a dystopian future, and US Army officer John Henry Brennick (Christopher Lambert) and his wife Karen S. Brennick (Loryn Locklin) are expecting a second child. Strict one-child policies forbid any couples having a second child, but the Brennick's first child died at birth so they attempt to get away with a second pregnancy. They are caught trying to cross the border and sent to a maximum security prison that is owned and run by the "MenTel Corporation" A place where dreams are not your own and all thoughts of escape are dealt with severely by futuristic methods unheard of in the civilised world.You got Connor MacLeod, Herbert West, Clarence J. Boddicker and one of the finest female bottoms in cinema, all crammed into one riotous, hokey and immeasurably fun movie. It probably wont come as much of a surprise to anyone to learn that this Christopher Lambert starrer is not going to have you scratching the cranial matter and pondering the future of mankind. But it does have some interesting ideas both in terms of its prison setting and in the technological advancements used. I mean hey, would you try to escape if you had an intestinal bomb set to go off outside the perimeters? {think The Running Man's neck braces but in your belly}. It can also be said of Fortress that it's not over ambitious, where director Stuart Gordon is aware of his restraints and keeps it simple but sparky, of which this is aided by Lambert buffing up and throwing punches left right and off kilter. Tho nothing much as an actor, Lambert none the less gives the likes of Sly and Arnie a run for their money here and looks every inch and sinew an action hero.Kurtwood Smith, Jeffrey Combs, Lincoln Kilpatrick, Clifton Collins Jr. and of course,Loryn Locklin's bottom, all add varying degrees of fun and frolics to the occasion. While the set design for the interiors is really rather snazzy. It's B movie berserker time folks, a dystopian world where Christopher Lambert can beat the crap out of blokes twice his size, where half humanoids have flame throwers for arms, and Kurtwood Smith is in charge of a prison. Great fun really, truly. 7/10

After making an astounding breakthrough into the horror genre with the splatter classic RE-ANIMATOR, Stuart Gordon's career has consisted of a wild string of hits & misses. His biggest miss was Fortress, a futuristic prison breakout film that was also his biggest hit, proving so popular that a sequel came out half a decade later.When I said "his biggest miss", I meant that despite being a box-office hit, the film met with a mixed reaction from critics & genre fans alike. I personally don't like the film – Fortress is sci-fi at its most brainless. It is perhaps the worst film that Gordon has ever made (not to mention being so cheesy that it will win a French cheese competition).The USA has become a totalitarian regime, with a law passed that limits a woman to one child only. Marine Captain John Brennick & his wife, who is pregnant with her second child (the first died at birth), are caught at a checkpoint & sent to the Fortress, a secluded underground prison complex situated in the middle of a desert. There, prisoners are terrorised by pain-causing implants & computer-controlled devices that censor dreams. Brennick attempts to conduct a prison breakout, no mean feat considering that the prison is virtually escape-proof.Fortress is actually a wild concoction of every sci-fi cliché under the sun, which, although entertaining in the check-your-brain-at-the-door sense, proves to be amazingly silly. First, the film shows the US adopting a one-child policy, which is rather improbable given the fact that the US is a large country & is not packed to the brim like China, thereby making such a law pointless. The implants are another thing – they are poorly designed (they can be pulled out of the prisoner's body using magnetics) & there is nothing to stop them from being passed out as waste matter. The dream censor is ridiculous to say the least – if they can eliminate wet dreams, then why are prisoners going around raping their fellow inmates. The film also shoves in cyborgs (a staple of many self-respecting genre films during the 1990s), with a cyborg governor (who acts more human than machine) & whole cyborg SWAT teams, who prove to be nothing more than convenient cannon fodder for our hero, although they do kill half the escaping party.The acting is rather mixed. Christopher Lambert does his naughty-schoolboy impression (he is one of the most wooden actors around), while his fellow inmates are a lot more believable, with Jeffery Combs playing a jittery-nutbag to perfection & Kurtwood Smith trying to be a sympathetic villain, but narrowly missing out on that role by Tom Towles. Gordon throws in his usual darkly comedic splatter, which does contribute greatly to the film's watchability, although it is a style which belongs more to the horror genre than an action film like Fortress.