Plot: An escaped convict (Dolph Lundgren) kidnaps a female Sheriff deputy and flees through the California desert, all while trying to clear his name and fighting off the corrupt police officer who leads the manhunt.
Comments: A question that often came to my mind while watching this one is if Dolph Lundgren could ever start in a good film. I sort of answered myself when I had a flashback to that episode of "Futurama" where Bender wants to be a chef, but ultimately fails to produce anything remotely edible. He eventually receives an elixir from his master that can turn anything he cooks into... well, food. Sort of. At least stuff you could eat without dying. This film resembles Bender's cooking a lot. See, for starters Dolph is a non-entity, a vacuum of talent so big that sometimes I could swear his co-stars were delivering their lines into empty space rather than speaking to him.
But luckily for us, the film was directed by Vic Armstrong, one of Hollywood's top action directors, one often featuring as "Second Unit Director" of too many of our favourite blockbusters. Now, it would have been too much to ask that Armstrong had been paying attention to all those big shot directors while they dealt with stuff like plot continuity or the many nuances of acting, but he manages to throw in the movie so much preposterous stuff that the final product manages to be quite entertaining. Of course, we're definitely in B-Movie territory, so I'm not talking about drama or strong performances -apart from Lundgren, George Seagal is equally embarrasing to watch as a mustachoed corrupt cop - but rather of stuff like sweeping vistas of the desert, a co-star who is easy on the eyes (Kristian Alfonso), a long segment where Lundgren goes berserk on a bunch of oriental extras inside a warehouse, John Woo style, a decent chase involving obvious replicas of Ferrari F40 and Lamborghini supercars and too many embarrasing nods to Humphrey Bogart's "High Sierra", a film that you'd think Armstrong wouldn't want to compare with this one.
So in the end it ends up being good fun, and probably one of Lundgren's best movies, together there with "the good one" Punisher movie and "Silent Trigger". High cuisine? Certainly not, but hey, at least it's edible.
P.D: Apparently there are several versions of the film floating around. The unrated cut has, as expected, all the bloody bits left intact, but the R-Rated version has an extended finale where Lundgren gets to show off his fighting skills. Not that George Seagal is exactly a worthy contender, but...
Oh, and the original AR is panoramic, take that into account or you'll end up with one of those horrible Pan&Scan versions.
No, of course nobody will notice they're replicas...