cult film freak: RAY LIOTTA & STUART WILSON IN 'NO ESCAPE' WITH ERNIE HUDSON

Ray Liotta in NO ESCAPE Year: 1994 Rating: ***1/2

An action-packed b-movie that takes itself way too seriously, which is what makes NO ESCAPE great fun as Ray Liotta's only in an actual Fascist-future prison for a brief time, ironic since it's a prison-genre flick but taking place on a penal island like PAPILLON following the survival rules and ragged costume design of THE ROAD WARRIOR...

Genuinely cool and fit, Liotta is, of course, the toughest and strongest and a completely handy stranger in a fortress world run by a passive yet formidable Lance Henriksen, polar opposite of British actor Stuart Wilson ruling the woodsy outskirts, whose insanely overboard, monologue-spouting dictator makes Dennis Hopper's WATERWORLD performance seem tame (and all but drowns out the prison's computer-monitor-monitoring warden Michael Lerner)...

Stuart Wilson in NO ESCAPE

Wilson is both threatening and colorfully sarcastic, like a game show host from hell, barking orders at an unflinching Liotta in one of his post GOODFELLAS leading roles, possibly the reason why he never became a really big star, starring in other b-types like UNLAWFUL ENTR Y and here in what almost resembles a bargain bin Straight-to-Video flick...

Which really isn't such a bad thing since, for better or worse, you'll wanna stick around to find out if the film's title is really true: because the one thing the director's able to really convey is that Liotta... alongside dependable sidekick Ernie Hudson, token doomed naive kid Kevin Dillon, token offbeat favor-man Kevin J. O'Connor and shifty turncoat Ian McNiece... are genuinely stuck in one helluva pickle.