One of my all time favorites.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

In a planned escape, Sam (Jean-Claude Van Damme) makes it on down the road. Unfortunately the prison guard knows how to use a scope and his partner in crime (Anthony Starke) dies. Sam makes his way to the widow Anderson (Rosanna Arquette) farm who is being foreclosed upon by the evil banker to make room for a development. Sam helps her out.This is the Rosanna Arquette in her prime and is about two table dances away from paying off her farm and that of her neighbor. The film had about as half as many stuntmen as actors, for the short amount of time they were needed. Our protagonist is a gentleman criminal. This movie appears to be the inspiration for the chick flick "Labor Day." Guide: No F-words. Sex and nudity (Rosanna Arquette)

Despite being later copied in 1997's FIRE DOWN BELOW, this is actually one of Van Damme's lesser films from his 'classic' period. It looks like he was trying to break away from his martial arts background here into more serious acting (which obviously failed), so fans will be disappointed that there are none of those famed kicks to the head. In fact, the film is extremely slow-moving, the monotony broken up only by a few good action sequences (the barn fire coming to mind). Adding insult to injury, a good deal of the film is made up with sickly sentimentalising in the form of Rosanna Arquette, who comes across as a really poor actress here, and an obnoxious child, namely Kieran Culkin, the younger brother of Macaulay. Yes, I cheered when someone smacked his gob at the end of this film.The fight scenes, when they do come, are pretty good, but sadly they're over very quickly. The first time we see Van Damme, he's beating up his guards, which doesn't exactly endear his character to the audience, later he flashes two young children in the woods. I'm not surprised they arrested this guy. The plot about landowners using dodgy methods to get rid of the woman living on their land is nothing new, and extremely basic - you could figure out what was going to happen next with ease.The acting is okay here, but strictly of the television-movie level, with the aforementioned Arquette and Culkin going through the paces. Van Damme seems to be a little out of his depth, as if his heart wasn't really in the film, and we don't really get to know him very well. He's not at his best. Of the bad guys, Ted Levine provides a worthy opponent for Van Damme, while Joss Ackland enjoys a seedy role (almost exactly the same role as he played in LETHAL WEAPON 2). NOWHERE TO RUN is passable entertainment, but you could do a lot better.

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

In real life, Jean Claude Van Damme is not only a great martial arts sensation, but on the talk show circuit he is remarkably witty, charismatic and entertaining. Yet astonishingly a movie like "Nowhere to Run" does not exploit any of Jean Claude Van Damme's strengths in either area. To be sure, the plot for "Nowhere to Run" is little more than the familiar story of the stranger Sam Gillen (Jean Claude Van Damme) visiting small town America to save the home of Clydie (the sexy Rosanna Arquette) and her two children from developers, who are obviously evil because they are led by Franklin Hale (Joss Ackland) who has a strong British accent -- and one of the unwritten rules in Hollywood is that all British people in the movies are evil. Yet even if one excuses the predictable plot, surely director Robert Harmon and writers Joe Eszterhas, Robert Marquand, Leslie Bohem, and Randy Feldman could have done something to make the movie more interesting. "Nowhere to Run" has lots of action scenes, but why not have Jean Claude Van Damme perform his beautifully choreographed karate in any of them? Van Damme is also a remarkably charismatic and witty individual, but why not show that side of him by giving him more things to say and allowing him just to be himself. I was astonished to see that most of Van Damme's dialogue included one, two or three words strewn together. Could Joe Eszterhas, who is paid millions for his scripts, come up with anything better than that? Could any of the screen writers (four in all!) work together to come up with anything better? "Nowhere to Run" apparently cost $15 million to make, but its performances are on par with a low-budget Canadian film with B- or C-grade actors. And it is a great shame because Jean-Claude is probably one of the most interesting personalities to emerge in the 1980s and 1990s. He has the confidence, charisma and dynamism of a shooting star, but instead of allowing him to be himself, the producers, the writers and director hamstrung this movie sensation with terrible scripts that give him nothing to say and replace his awesome karate with brain numbing punching scenes and shoot em up scenes.There are only few saving graces in this mess. Clydie (Rosanna Arquette) has a certain sex appeal. Van Damme's line that he is the parking intendant looking out for his customers was cute. The kids were also entertaining. But for the most part, "Nowhere to Run" is a big disappointment that gratuitously wastes the acting talent.