Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Truly Dreadful Film

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Blistering performances.

Jean-Claude Van Damme escapes a prison transport vehicle to do battle with an evil magician and scum-bag cop who have been employed by developers to steal a communities' land. Kieran Culkin delivers a star performance as a kid who thinks boobs are "really gross!" Rosanna Arquette's hot mom boobs and plenty of shocking screenwriter incompetence make this film watchable with a couple of dudes. Don't check your smart phone too much because the slow moments pay off without too much meandering.Spoiler alert!: the kids both see Jean-Claude's penis before the mom does! Au revoir!

This movie sucks. Pardon the profanity but it seriously does. Van Damme is an action hero and this movie has hardly any in it. The characters that are introduced have no relation to each other, so when Van Damme watches the woman through the window take a bath, it is not because she is his wife, it is because he is a pervert. The movie has a few fight scenes and a motor bike chase, but other than that it is purely dialogue between Van Damme and Rosanna Arquet and nothing more. It is a boring movie that goes way to slow and one that you simply can't wait for the end. You except action and wait for it and never get it.Van Damme plays a criminal that escapes from a prison bus. His buddy is shot while escaping and he goes into hiding. Here he stumbles on a single mother who is being bullied by developers who want to buy her farm, yet she refuses to sell. That is basically the movie. What annoyed me is that it starts off as a prison break and then goes to a completely different style of movie, namely defending the lady. The change destroyed the movie even more than Van Damme's presence. In fact, he was not the annoying part of the movie, but it was the movie itself that really annoyed me. My opinion: don't bother.

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.

15 years ago, a group of producers were planning a MOVIE. This MOVIE would star JEAN CLAUDE VAN DAMME and would be an ACTION THRILLER. Of course, because of it's PEDIGREE all original thinking would be THROWN OUT OF THE WINDOW. You see, you can never OVERESTIMATE THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE AVERAGE ACTION MOVIE FAN. They don't want myriad PLOTS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CHARACTERS. No, they want THE MUSCLES FROM BRUSSELS KICKING SOME ASS.So, they drew up a little template that would NOT ONLY FORM THE BASIS OF EVERY FUTURE VAN DAMME FLICK, but would also be COPIED BY COUNTLESS OTHER CHOP SOCKY PRODUCTIONS, especially those of the STRAIGHT TO VIDEO VARIETY. Till now, this proved formula has been A CLOSELY GUARDED SECRET. Just like the recipe of the KRABBY PATTY. Having watched Nowhere to Run though, I think I can take a pretty good stab at CRACKING THE CODE. So here it is. Sorry, studios:1. Think of a stupid title. For a start our hero can escape anytime he wants, plus he rides a restored motorcycle for half the film.. so why would he want to 'run' anywhere?2. Give Van Damme a shady past, something he's not proud of (in this case, being an escaped convict involved in bank robberies), and then halfway through have him blurt out his crime to the love of his life. She immediately rejects him, but decides he's not so bad when he redeems himself by beating up the men who are trying to kill her. As you do.3. Write in two cute kids who see Jean as a father figure, as they lost theirs due to a heart attack. They must be a boy and a girl. The girl has to carry a teddy bear everywhere and shout "MOMMY" a lot the boy has to be spunky and resourceful, even saving our hero's life at one point. Like it or not, he becomes a surrogate father to the little nippers. Bless!4. If the main protagonist does get injured in the course of all his brawling, then don't worry. Put away the medkit, because in the very next scene, the nastiest of cuts will completely disappear! It'll be like nothing happened to him! What a relief!5. The chief villain must be a old dude, wearing a posh suit and with an English accent. All throughout the movie, he has a seemingly endless stream of underlings to do his dirty work for him, but when they're reduced to rubble by The Muscles he should go completely nuts and wave a gun around. Of course this tactic also fails, and the damn Limey is arrested or killed. Phew!6. The hero's love interest should have a rival for her affections who hates him and even sides with the bad guys temporarily to get him out of the picture. He soon as he sees how ruthless these dudes are though, and comes to his senses. He even congratulates the hero on a job well done at the end as he's surrounded by dead bodies. So he was a stand-up guy after all!! 7. Have the fight over something completely worthless, like a derelict old farmhouse, that most people would quite happily sell at a profit. One lady though, ain't budging because of it's 'sentimental' value and she'll even tolerate thugs killing her cattle and threatening her life with hooks to keep this ramshackle property. It's in a way of a huge development, you see. Will Van Damme risk his life over this belligerent bint? Your bet your..8. Make full use of your setting. Because this particular film is set in a farm (see 7), in the fight scenes have Van Damme and his opponent use rakes, pitchforks and whatever else happens to be lying around as weapons. But of course, nothing beats the good old uppercut, even if it does take about 10 of them to knock the bad guys over. Hmm.. Maybe The Muscles isn't as strong as we thought.9. Don't forget The Gratuitous Shower Scene (TM). If you can squeeze in a Gratuitous Sex Scene (TM), even better.10. Put in a bunch of second rate John McClane style one-liners to try and give the hero some personality. Examples: 'Au Revior F***er' as he shoots dead an evil henchman, and "No, but I know what you are" when the Brit bad guy (See 5) asks "Do you know who I am?!" Shakespeare it ain't.So to sum it up then: a BOG STANDARD ACTION MOVIE with no bells and whistles, but plenty of Van Damme TAKING NO PRISONERS AND KICKING BUTT. You even get to see HIS at one point. Tee hee. In the pantheon to JCVD films, I would recommend STREETFIGHTER and TIMECOP above this, but if you've WATCHED EVERY OTHER ONE OF HIS CLASSICS then this might be just what the doctor ordered. A HEAD DOCTOR, anyway. Brainless fun, nothing more. 4/10 P.S This review has been especially designed for action genre fans with short attention spans. All important words have been CAPITILISED, so you can just scan through it quickly before getting back to The Last Boy Scout. Hope you appreciate it!