It's my turn for a review this time, and I'm going back to action for this one. I'm taking a look at the 1996 action thriller/quasi-Defiant One's remake, Fled starring a pre fat ass skateboarding bible preaching Stephen Baldwin and a pre-Morpheus Lawrence FishburnE. Check it out...
The 90s was the last great decade for action. It came before the new millennium and the advent of euro lensed DTV movies. It was a decade where almost every action film got a cinema release. Fled is one of those, an adrenaline fuelled prison escape movie with some good shoot outs and some good stunts. It may not be on the level of some other 90s actioners such as Long Kiss Goodnight or The Specialist, but it holds it's own it the shoot 'em up world.
The Film is a loose remake of The Defiant Ones, a 1958 prison chase film that starred Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier. We had one white convict and one black convict. The same as Fled, but where as The Defiant Ones was more a drama, Fled turns into an action film, where our convicts go after a disc containing account information for a major bank, of which a Columbian druglord is the 'managing director?'. Our Convicts, named Dodge and Piper, are chased all over Georgia (ATL) by federal marshals, hitmen and the police detective responsible for putting Dodge in prison. They're helped out by a pointlessly cast Salma Hayak as a sort of love interest for Fishburne. They realise that they're being set up and surprise surprise Piper turns out to be a cop.
The Film isn't exactly a brain tester, there's motor bike chase, shoot outs, car chases, explosions and even some Chinese knife torture, a long way from Stanley Cramer's The Defiant Ones, but the action is well handled by Kevin Hooks (Passenger 57) and the performances are of a certain quality. Stephen Baldwin actually acts in this and while it's far removed from his best work (Usual Suspects) it is a hell of a lot better than Bio Dome or that dark matter sci-fi original movie in which he can controll dark matter (obviously), Hayak is, as I previously pointed out, pointlessly cast, but she does her best with what she's given. Fishburn is his usual badass self, still kind of an oxfam version of Denzel by what of Samuel L. Jackson, but when he bursts into Dodge's hotel room, two guns blazing, it is pretty kick ass.
The major plus point this film gets is its casting of Will Patton as the cop responsible for arresting Dodge in the first place, now Im a big fan of Will Patton after his scene chewing villainous Gen. Bethlehem in Kevin Costner's awesome, and i mean awesome, post apocalyptic epic, The Postman. Here he plays the cop character as a straight man, not making him act like fucking boss hogg off of Dukes Of hazard and making him the only real trust worthy son of a bitch in the film. Like i said i think Will Patton is cool, he's like David Morse, an underrated actor but always kicks the ass of any of his roles. Dr. Kelso from Scrubs also turns up.
The Script from Preston A.Whitmore II is a little bit crap, stealing from better well known movies and throwing in really bad movie references, such as The Godfather and the more obvious Fugitive and as many product placements as possible, especially with the garbage spewed by Dodge about some motorbike. The film tries to play like a Shane Black movie but can't quite reach the snappy dialogue or frenzied action scenes that we know from Shane Black. But at it's heart it tries to roll with the big boys but never really manages to get in the crew as if Fled had failed it's initiation test. But Fuck me is this film entertaining, i know ive bashed the film but at only 92 minutes long there are worse films you could watch...Shank being one of them.
So if you have nothing else to watch for 92 mins and this is just gathering dust, put it on and just enjoy the fuck out of it. It was never going to win any awards but for pure action entertainment, it passes the time.
FLED:
FILM: 5/10
ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: 9/10
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