No Escape (1994) | A limey and a kiwi review forgotten sci-fi, horror and fantasy films in this hit podcast.

Dan and Conrad find themselves exiled to a leafy island that looks suspiciously like Queensland in this episode, where they explore Martin Campbell's No Escape (1994) – an airy, outdoor adventure set in the distant future of 2022. It stars Ray Liotta as the scarred military vet convicted for shooting his CO after he covered up a war crime, who teams up with fellow inmates Lance Henriksen, Ernie Hudson and Kevin Dillon to defeat the evil Stuart Wilson's 'tribe' of sadistic killers and expose the greater evils of private prisons. Produced on a $20 million budget by Gale Anne Hurd, the movie got Campbell the gig directing GoldenEye (1995), but quickly vanished from theatres. But does it deserve early release from the oubliette to ease 90s prison movie overcrowding? Or should it be hurled back in with no chance of parole? Find out!

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[00:00:04] Welcome to Movie Oubliette, the film review podcast for movies that most people have mercifully forgotten.

[00:00:10] I'm Dan.

[00:00:11] And I'm Conrad.

[00:00:12] And in each episode, we drag a forsaken film out of the Oubliette.

[00:00:17] Discuss it and judge it to decide whether it should be set free.

[00:00:21] Or whether it should be thrown back and consigned to oblivion forever.

[00:00:37] Movie Oubliette

[00:00:39] Welcome to episode 162 of Movie Oubliette, the hemisphere hopping podcast for forgotten fantastical films with me, Conrad, catching mice in Cambridge, UK.

[00:00:51] Oh, okay. And me, Dan, getting battle scars, trying my hand at archery here in Melbourne, Australia.

[00:01:00] We focus on forgotten fantasy, sci-fi and horror films because we love tropical island getaways running around in blackface and a loincloth and bazookas that could level a city block.

[00:01:12] Oh, yes, yes, we do.

[00:01:15] So mice? Conrad? Really?

[00:01:17] I know.

[00:01:18] Well, I live out on the fens here in Cambridge. And I heard scratching above my head while I was in the bathroom early in the morning.

[00:01:29] And I left my wildlife camera up there to see what it was. And it was mice.

[00:01:35] So I've been putting up humane traps. And I was so cliched about it, too.

[00:01:41] I bought some cheese. Oh, okay.

[00:01:43] And put some cheese in there. And it worked.

[00:01:45] Oh, yes.

[00:01:46] I keep catching mice.

[00:01:47] That's nice.

[00:01:49] Yeah. And then I go on a long walk and release them in a field. But I've got a sneaking suspicion that they're just coming back.

[00:01:56] Oh, no. Oh, surely not.

[00:01:59] I looked it up. What's the range of a mouse? And it says two miles. They've been known to come back to their original nest from two miles away.

[00:02:08] Yeah. And I'm not walking two miles. You're going to have to go for a drive, Conrad.

[00:02:14] Oh, yeah. I did release the last one at work in the car. It's probably bad, isn't it?

[00:02:23] Well, depending on whether the mice go inside your work.

[00:02:27] Yeah. No, no, they shouldn't do it. It was like backing onto a field again. So I'm hoping they started a new and exciting life.

[00:02:35] Right. Yes.

[00:02:36] Yeah. That one is not coming back. That's 20 miles. That's fine.

[00:02:40] Okay.

[00:02:43] But yeah, cheese. Couldn't believe it. It works.

[00:02:46] Oh, yeah. I didn't know.

[00:02:47] Yeah. And you're trying archery.

[00:02:50] Oh, yes. Well, yeah. One of my wife's cousins is quite a skilled archer. So she used to compete.

[00:02:58] So we thought since she's in town, we would go to an archery range with one of our other friends as well.

[00:03:05] And yeah, we had a go at archery for I think it was a couple of hours.

[00:03:10] We were just shooting targets with arrows.

[00:03:13] But yes, one of the downfalls or maybe for me being an unskilled archer is you get the drawstring.

[00:03:26] It can slap back onto your arm.

[00:03:29] But I was wearing a guard, but it kept kind of clipping parts of my skin that wasn't under the guard.

[00:03:36] So I got quite a substantial bruise on my arm.

[00:03:41] There went all sorts of colors.

[00:03:43] But it healed.

[00:03:45] So it's fine.

[00:03:46] But yeah.

[00:03:48] Yeah.

[00:03:49] It was fine though.

[00:03:50] Did you have aches in muscles that you didn't know that you had as well?

[00:03:53] I didn't actually.

[00:03:55] It wasn't too bad.

[00:03:56] Yeah.

[00:03:56] I think the bows we were using were beginner bows.

[00:03:59] So a lot easier to draw back.

[00:04:01] Oh, okay.

[00:04:02] Yeah.

[00:04:03] But one of the teachers there was going around with a compound bow, which is the really, really tough bows to draw back.

[00:04:13] They have like pulleys and levers on them.

[00:04:15] But in order to pull them back, you have to have immense strength.

[00:04:20] And I was not able to pull that back.

[00:04:23] But my wife's cousin was.

[00:04:26] And the teacher said she was the second woman he's ever seen pull it back, which is amazing.

[00:04:35] Ah, that's cool.

[00:04:36] So she would be the person that you would want accompanying you on today's film quite likely.

[00:04:43] Probably.

[00:04:44] Yeah.

[00:04:45] Yeah.

[00:04:48] But before we get into that, Conrad, what's in the mailbag today?

[00:04:52] Well, we heard from our patrons about Peeping Tom, the movie that we covered in our last episode.

[00:05:00] Chazilla said another great pick, guys.

[00:05:03] I give it two enthusiastic killer cameras up.

[00:05:06] These old slasher flicks are magnificent.

[00:05:09] The colours, the shots, the music, the dancing, the murder.

[00:05:13] Yes.

[00:05:43] All about the imagination.

[00:05:45] It's all about the imagination.

[00:05:46] Being creepy and disturbing, which sometimes is better than actually showing stuff.

[00:05:51] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:05:52] Jasmine said, this was a great excuse for me to finally watch this film.

[00:05:57] I've heard so much about and Michael Powell certainly delivered.

[00:06:01] While it might share similarities with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and William Castle's equally good Homicidal.

[00:06:08] Haven't seen that.

[00:06:09] Oh, I haven't seen that.

[00:06:10] No.

[00:06:11] I don't see this influencing the slasher genre so much as I see it influencing the giallo films of the 70s, few of which can stand up to Peeping Tom's chilling lead character.

[00:06:23] Hmm.

[00:06:25] Hmm.

[00:06:25] That's a good point.

[00:06:26] That is a good point.

[00:06:27] It is.

[00:06:27] Yeah, especially the use of colour, I would say.

[00:06:31] Hmm.

[00:06:31] Yeah, yeah.

[00:06:32] Hmm.

[00:06:34] And finally, we heard from Serge of Cold Crash Pictures.

[00:06:38] Hello, Serge.

[00:06:39] Hello, Serge.

[00:06:40] And he said, Peeping Tom might just be the most well-regarded film that Movie Oubliette has ever reviewed.

[00:06:47] Oh.

[00:06:47] We talked about this one incessantly in film school, but apparently it's not so well-known outside film school circles.

[00:06:55] Well, I'm glad to hear they're bringing it to a wider audience.

[00:06:59] Yeah, I really am surprised it's not more renowned, but I guess it has a great reputation with film students.

[00:07:07] Yeah, and filmmakers, I think, probably thanks to Martin Scorsese's sponsorship.

[00:07:12] So, yeah, it's all good.

[00:07:15] Yeah.

[00:07:16] But do keep in touch, everyone.

[00:07:17] We love hearing from you.

[00:07:19] Yes, yes, yes, we do.

[00:07:21] So, Dan, what will we be venturing into today?

[00:07:24] Hmm, yes, well, I'll go fidget.

[00:07:30] Oh, I'm in the jungle on an island.

[00:07:33] Nice.

[00:07:34] I think the movie's in this stagnant green pool of water.

[00:07:38] Hang on.

[00:07:40] Yuck.

[00:07:41] And there's helicopter surveillance.

[00:07:43] I should get out of here.

[00:07:45] Creepy.

[00:07:46] Hey, don't ever turn your back on me.

[00:07:48] Ah, I'm back.

[00:07:50] Oh, good.

[00:07:51] What did you bring back with you?

[00:07:52] Well, today we will be discussing, from 1994, the sci-fi action adventure movie No Escape,

[00:08:01] which was actually a patron's choice brought to us by Boss Salvage.

[00:08:07] Yes, he was very excited it got picked.

[00:08:09] Ah, well, it's directed by Martin Campbell, based on a novel by Richard Hurley,

[00:08:14] screenplay by Michael Galen and Joel Gross.

[00:08:18] And it stars Ray Liotta, Lance Hendrickson, Stuart Wilson, Ernie Hudson, Kevin Dillon, Kevin J. O'Connor, Don Henderson and Ian McNeice.

[00:08:31] Ooh.

[00:08:32] And what happens in this movie?

[00:08:34] Well, yes.

[00:08:35] Set in the distant future of 2022, prisons have become big business.

[00:08:42] So much so that this one particular prison sends a bunch of its inmates to a jungle island called Absalom to battle each other Mad Max style.

[00:08:53] Our protagonist, Robbins, is one such convict, but imbued with a special set of skills,

[00:09:00] and able to escape the clutches of Maric, the ruthless leader of one of the island factions, the Outsiders.

[00:09:08] Robbins, fortunately, befriends another peace-loving group and is taken into their community.

[00:09:15] But Maric will stop at nothing to bring down their benevolent village and murder their leader, the father.

[00:09:23] This whole setting is strangely post-apocalyptic, but is there no escape?

[00:09:29] We shall find out.

[00:09:30] Conrad, after the break.

[00:09:32] We shall.

[00:09:46] And we're back to talk about No Escape, a patron's choice, picked by our patron boss, Salvage.

[00:09:53] Conrad, had you seen this movie before?

[00:09:56] Well, embarrassingly, I thought I had.

[00:10:00] Oh.

[00:10:00] But then I started watching it and I thought, I have no idea what this movie is.

[00:10:05] So this is a double blind.

[00:10:08] Yes.

[00:10:10] Double blind.

[00:10:13] I screwed up.

[00:10:15] I confused this with a completely different sci-fi prison movie from the early 1990s.

[00:10:22] Oh, yes.

[00:10:23] Called Fortress.

[00:10:24] Oh, yes.

[00:10:25] I've heard of it.

[00:10:26] I haven't seen it, but I've heard about it.

[00:10:28] Yeah.

[00:10:28] Which stars Christophe Lambert and Kurtwood Smith.

[00:10:32] And it's directed by Stuart Gordon, oddly enough.

[00:10:35] So I thought I hadn't seen many Stuart Gordon movies, but I had seen this one.

[00:10:39] And it was also shot in Queensland, Australia.

[00:10:42] Really?

[00:10:42] So I thought it was that.

[00:10:45] So when this started, I was really confused.

[00:10:48] How about you?

[00:10:49] Right, right.

[00:10:50] Yeah.

[00:10:51] There is also another movie called No Escape that came out in 2015, which is more of an action

[00:10:58] thriller movie.

[00:10:59] It stars Lake Bell, Owen Wilson and Piers Brosnan.

[00:11:03] Right.

[00:11:03] So listeners out there, don't confuse it with that No Escape either.

[00:11:08] No.

[00:11:08] We'll have to put the year in brackets on the title of this podcast.

[00:11:12] Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[00:11:13] No.

[00:11:13] So I had not heard of this movie.

[00:11:16] I had not seen this movie.

[00:11:18] It was a completely fresh viewing for me.

[00:11:22] I knew about the premise of the film.

[00:11:24] I mean, it's called No Escape.

[00:11:25] It's a prison movie.

[00:11:26] I expected a prison movie set in the future, which you do get for the first maybe 10 minutes

[00:11:34] of the movie.

[00:11:35] And then they all get shipped to an island and it becomes like Mad Max in the jungle on

[00:11:42] an island.

[00:11:42] Yes.

[00:11:43] Which is a very different movie than what I expected.

[00:11:46] Yeah.

[00:11:46] Well, I wrote down it's part Escape from New York and part Battle Royale.

[00:11:52] Yeah.

[00:11:53] Except it doesn't have the same surveillance.

[00:11:56] Like they're not filmed at all.

[00:11:58] It's not televised.

[00:12:00] No.

[00:12:00] It's not like Hunger Games or Battle Royale where they're watched.

[00:12:04] I think the warden and the prison personnel do have sensors, like satellite sensors, but

[00:12:11] they can't really see what's going on.

[00:12:13] No.

[00:12:13] So how much enjoyment are they getting out of this?

[00:12:16] And why are they doing it?

[00:12:17] I think it's overspill from their private prison for people that they think are sort of beyond

[00:12:24] any kind of redemption or rehabilitation.

[00:12:26] So they give up on them and just dump them on an island just out of, I don't know, is it

[00:12:32] expedient or cheap or just cruel?

[00:12:35] I don't know why they're doing it.

[00:12:37] Yeah.

[00:12:37] I was thinking this is much cheaper.

[00:12:41] I mean, they don't have to feed them.

[00:12:42] They don't have to clothe them.

[00:12:45] They don't have to do any laundry or any housekeeping or have any staff.

[00:12:51] They just get shipped to an island and left to their own devices.

[00:12:56] Yeah.

[00:12:56] Which is, that's quite a lot of cost saving right there.

[00:12:59] I think it is.

[00:13:00] Yeah.

[00:13:00] I think they do talk about the outsiders, the faction that's led by the evil Maric.

[00:13:05] Yes.

[00:13:05] I think they are getting helicopter drops of supplies.

[00:13:09] That's right.

[00:13:10] Whereas the sort of utopian hippie society commune in the middle, the insiders, they get nothing,

[00:13:17] but that's because they pretty much established their own agriculture and so on.

[00:13:22] So they're self-sufficient.

[00:13:23] So it's fine.

[00:13:24] They're the civilized, humane ones.

[00:13:27] And Maric and his gang of bikey skinheads are just anarchists.

[00:13:32] They just go around killing each other and laughing about it and complaining about not having food because they're not, you know, farming or hunting or anything.

[00:13:44] Yeah.

[00:13:44] And they're constantly raiding the insiders for reasons.

[00:13:48] I'm not sure exactly why they don't like them.

[00:13:51] Yeah.

[00:13:52] I did find it very, very similar to two movies that were watched, both Kevin Costner movies, Waterworld and The Postman.

[00:14:01] Yes.

[00:14:02] Especially The Postman in terms of Robbins, played by Ray Liotta, being very kind of similar to the Postman character, you know, that reluctant hero that is incredibly skilled, but then becomes their leader and definitely embraced by the people.

[00:14:19] But it had the same framework of Waterworld as well with just surviving and just making clothes or armor from whatever they could find.

[00:14:30] So everyone's just covered in trash, which is very similar to Waterworld.

[00:14:34] Not as damp, though.

[00:14:36] Yes.

[00:14:37] Kevin J. O'Connor plays this character who is like a beachcomber who's set up a whole industry around selling or bartering the stuff that he's managed to find on the beach.

[00:14:48] Mm-hmm.

[00:14:49] That's sort of the way that they go about clothing themselves and building their society.

[00:14:53] It's just sort of the knickknacks, the discarded stuff that floats in from the ocean.

[00:14:58] Yeah.

[00:14:58] I also was confused at the start because I thought, hey, it's in the future.

[00:15:06] It's sci-fi.

[00:15:07] They're on another planet because it looked like another planet.

[00:15:11] When they're on the train and it's got this kind of red desert.

[00:15:15] Oh, yeah.

[00:15:15] Red skies.

[00:15:16] It looks very much like Ghosts of Mars.

[00:15:19] Like, they're on Mars.

[00:15:20] I wrote that down.

[00:15:21] And I thought, it's trains on Mars again.

[00:15:23] Yeah.

[00:15:24] Yeah.

[00:15:24] And they get to the prison and it looks like something in some sort of inhospitable landscape where nothing can live.

[00:15:31] It's this prison on Mars.

[00:15:33] And then they get shipped to this island paradise.

[00:15:36] Like, it's Queensland.

[00:15:38] It's Australia where it was filmed.

[00:15:40] And I noted when I watched it with my wife, this looks like Queensland.

[00:15:45] Because we went to Queensland last year.

[00:15:48] And of course, it was.

[00:15:50] But yeah, they get shipped to this island.

[00:15:52] And it is just, it's like a tropical paradise.

[00:15:55] Like, it really is.

[00:15:57] It doesn't seem to have any animals.

[00:15:59] No.

[00:15:59] There's no dangerous snakes.

[00:16:01] There's rats at one point.

[00:16:03] Yes.

[00:16:04] Okay.

[00:16:04] Which the main character, we learn later, doesn't like.

[00:16:07] So, his sort of Indiana Jones snakes, why did it have to be snakes, is rats, why did it have to be rats.

[00:16:14] But you find out afterwards that he doesn't like them after he's been covered in them.

[00:16:18] Yes.

[00:16:18] And then it never comes back again.

[00:16:20] Yeah.

[00:16:20] So, it's kind of pointless.

[00:16:21] Yeah, a little bit of pointless.

[00:16:23] But I did enjoy the characters in this movie.

[00:16:27] Comparing it to the Postman and Waterworld, where the main character, Kevin Costner, is kind of insufferable.

[00:16:35] He's kind of awful.

[00:16:36] Also, why he's awful is because of his treatment of woman.

[00:16:40] Whereas this movie, not a single woman to be seen.

[00:16:45] No, you're not going to get that issue.

[00:16:47] Apparently, the producer, Gaylan Hurd, famous for producing James Cameron's early films,

[00:16:53] she said that they were being pressured by the studio or the distributors or executives or whatever

[00:16:59] to put a woman in the film, even in a small role, so that they could slap her on the poster.

[00:17:05] Ah.

[00:17:06] But Gaylan Hurd found that demeaning to the woman and misleading for her audience.

[00:17:12] It's a male ensemble film about men.

[00:17:16] Yeah.

[00:17:17] I mean, it's a men's prison.

[00:17:19] Yeah.

[00:17:19] Why would there be a woman there?

[00:17:21] I mean, the one thing that I would say that there is something that is obviously conspicuous in its absence,

[00:17:26] which is any form of sexual or romantic dynamics between the men,

[00:17:31] because in a single-sex environment, that is going to happen.

[00:17:34] Yeah.

[00:17:35] But there's none of that.

[00:17:35] There is nothing romantic in this movie.

[00:17:38] No.

[00:17:39] At all.

[00:17:39] Which is kind of refreshing that they don't just sort of jam a woman in there to be a love interest.

[00:17:44] Yeah, exactly.

[00:17:45] And how they treat the woman, which is normally always going to be bad.

[00:17:49] It's the 90s.

[00:17:50] Yeah.

[00:17:51] But yeah, there were a lot of other similarities to other movies I found.

[00:17:54] The scene where Robbins is escaping Maric and his men, I felt very Rambo.

[00:18:01] Right.

[00:18:02] Like First Blood.

[00:18:03] Like he's in the jungle.

[00:18:04] He's escaping these booby traps or using the booby traps against them.

[00:18:09] Yeah.

[00:18:10] It felt very Rambo.

[00:18:11] And apparently there are similarities to Fortress, which you've mentioned,

[00:18:15] and also Soldier, that 1998 movie.

[00:18:18] Oh, right.

[00:18:19] Yeah.

[00:18:19] Kurt Russell.

[00:18:20] Yeah.

[00:18:21] Apparently.

[00:18:30] The characters.

[00:18:31] What did you think about the characters?

[00:18:33] Well, our central character, Robbins, is a military man who is clearly scarred.

[00:18:40] So, links back to our Robot Jocks discussion.

[00:18:43] We've got somebody who ends up having flashbacks to some sort of atrocity that has scarred them.

[00:18:51] Yes.

[00:18:51] It's interesting the way that they set the character up.

[00:18:53] It's over the opening title sequence.

[00:18:55] You've got an overhead shot of a parade ground.

[00:18:59] I love the opening.

[00:19:00] Yes.

[00:19:01] Yeah.

[00:19:01] Where the, you know, credits are appearing and people are marching through.

[00:19:05] And then all of a sudden Ray Liotta marches up to his commanding officer and blows his brains out.

[00:19:11] Yeah.

[00:19:11] And this is the reason that he's been imprisoned.

[00:19:14] And over the course of the arc of the film, he changes from being a loner who is very much focused on tending his own wounds and dealing with his own grievances about why he shot his commanding officer,

[00:19:28] what happened to him while he was in military service that he's so jaded about that he wants to expose.

[00:19:33] And not really wanting to be part of the hippie commune that much, not wanting to participate or be part of anything,

[00:19:41] criticizing the way that they run things and how they throw out anybody who lets their guard down or does anything that endangers the civilization.

[00:19:49] So he's sort of anti-social hero, the scarred military figure.

[00:19:54] That's sort of who he's set up as.

[00:19:56] Very, very capable in a situation where he needs to fight or survive in a ridiculous situation.

[00:20:03] I think they say at one point that the average survival rate on the island is three months.

[00:20:08] But yeah, he goes on this arc through the film where he gets more invested in the people around him,

[00:20:14] particularly a naive figure played by Kevin Dillon,

[00:20:19] a youngster who's in awe of him because of his survival abilities.

[00:20:25] Yeah.

[00:20:25] And Robin senses that he wants to try and protect him from getting involved and not going down the same path that he went down.

[00:20:33] Yeah, yeah.

[00:20:33] So he becomes invested in the characters and then invested in their cause,

[00:20:37] which is to raise the alarm in the outside world that this prison exists.

[00:20:42] They're desperate to get presumably the media aware of what's going on there.

[00:20:47] And he wants to expose this terrible thing in his past.

[00:20:51] Yeah.

[00:20:51] I think it was a cover up of a military atrocity against civilians that he's trying to expose.

[00:20:57] So that's his arc.

[00:20:58] And Ray Liotta, I think, is a fine leading man.

[00:21:02] He is.

[00:21:03] I've never seen him play a role like this before.

[00:21:07] Like I've seen him in mafia movies like Goodfellas.

[00:21:10] Yeah.

[00:21:11] Or as for some reason, I always see him as a cop or at least holding a gun.

[00:21:16] But yeah, he's a very heroic, considerate, caring and also capable character in this movie.

[00:21:24] He really does sell it.

[00:21:27] I was surprised to be so impressed by Ray Liotta in this role.

[00:21:32] Yeah.

[00:21:33] And a lot of it is his eyes.

[00:21:34] I mean, he's always had that pent up aggression or steely, cold, analytical thing going on with his eyes.

[00:21:42] But in this one, he seems to be doing a lot more in terms of letting you see both the pain, but also him learning things and opening up to people.

[00:21:52] And a lot of it with him is not necessarily the dialogue.

[00:21:56] Because the dialogue in the movie isn't great.

[00:21:58] It's kind of serviceable.

[00:22:00] I liked it.

[00:22:01] Did you like it?

[00:22:02] I enjoyed it.

[00:22:03] Yeah.

[00:22:04] It's very, I mean, depending on the characters.

[00:22:06] So you've got the father played by Lance Hendrickson, who I also thought was amazing in this role.

[00:22:12] Yeah.

[00:22:12] He plays this kind of almost cult leader, religious figure, even though they don't really go on about religion or anything.

[00:22:21] But he has this air of spiritual awakening to him.

[00:22:26] Everyone looks up to him.

[00:22:27] Everyone worships him in a way.

[00:22:30] You know, he walks around in like a long shirt.

[00:22:36] But yeah, he's great.

[00:22:38] And everything he sees is very profound.

[00:22:40] I mean, we'll get into it with the Moogly Awards.

[00:22:42] Yeah.

[00:22:43] And then on the opposite side, the leader of The Outsiders, you've got Marek, played by Stuart Wilson, who I kind of loved.

[00:22:54] He's one of those villains that you kind of love because he's very well spoken.

[00:22:59] He's a sophisticated villain.

[00:23:02] Like he's obviously educated.

[00:23:04] He's British, I think, as well.

[00:23:07] The actor is, I don't think he's playing British though.

[00:23:09] He's playing definitely someone that is of a certain class, definitely educated with how he speaks.

[00:23:17] And it's quite delightful listening to his dialogue.

[00:23:20] I loved his dialogue.

[00:23:21] Yeah.

[00:23:22] He kind of fits into, calling back to those Kevin Costner movies, he fits into that Alan Rickman, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.

[00:23:31] Yeah.

[00:23:32] Kind of villain as well.

[00:23:34] And Dennis Hopper in Waterworld.

[00:23:37] Yes.

[00:23:37] Will Patton in The Postman with quoting Shakespeare.

[00:23:41] Yeah.

[00:23:42] Exactly.

[00:23:42] It's sort of this 90s villain, which again, I could mention in the Moobly Awards, where the villain is upstaging the hero because they're more fun.

[00:23:50] And they seem to be enjoying doing this scenery and doing a larger than life performance.

[00:23:55] And yeah, as you say, he is a thinker.

[00:23:56] He is not necessarily just a brute strength, aggressive monster, but he seems to have achieved leadership over this outsider group of, as you say, like punk rocking savages somehow through his greater intellect.

[00:24:14] And you also don't know what he's going to do.

[00:24:16] He's very unpredictable.

[00:24:18] Yeah.

[00:24:19] Yeah.

[00:24:19] Exactly.

[00:24:20] Dangerous and disturbing.

[00:24:21] That's what I loved about his character.

[00:24:23] I felt like Marek and his merry men of savages.

[00:24:29] That's kind of what I feel like Neil Marshall wanted to do in Doomsday.

[00:24:34] Yes.

[00:24:35] They both have obvious influences from Mad Max, but I do feel like No Escape does it better.

[00:24:41] Yeah, it does.

[00:24:42] It achieves that.

[00:24:43] And Mad Max was definitely a touchstone for them.

[00:24:46] Gaylan Hurd mentioned it as being one of their influences.

[00:24:49] Yeah.

[00:24:50] Yeah.

[00:24:50] Some of the other sportscasts, Ernie Hudson's great, is Hawkins.

[00:24:55] And I loved that at the end of the movie, because spoilers, Lance Henriksen's father figure, I thought he was going to die because he was wounded.

[00:25:04] But then it turns out that he also has some sort of terminal illness as well.

[00:25:08] Hodgkin's disease.

[00:25:09] Yeah.

[00:25:09] Yeah, that's right.

[00:25:10] So he says to Robbins, the Ray Liotta character, I want you to take over.

[00:25:16] And he says, no, I don't want to.

[00:25:19] And you think he's going to do it anyway, that he's going to step up.

[00:25:22] But actually, he tells Hawkins that father wanted him to take over.

[00:25:28] Yeah.

[00:25:29] Which is quite sweet.

[00:25:30] It's quite sweet.

[00:25:30] And it's the right choice, actually.

[00:25:32] Yeah, it is.

[00:25:33] He is the right guy.

[00:25:34] Yeah.

[00:25:34] Rather than a misanthrope who's kind of self-centered.

[00:25:36] I think he is the right choice.

[00:25:38] Absolutely.

[00:25:38] Yeah.

[00:25:39] I mean, I kind of thought it was a bit ridiculous.

[00:25:42] Like, why would Robbins be the right choice?

[00:25:44] He's been there for what?

[00:25:45] A week?

[00:25:49] I don't know.

[00:25:50] I thought that was a bit silly.

[00:25:51] Yeah.

[00:25:51] Some of the other support characters, I really liked the guy that played Dysart, I think.

[00:25:57] Jack Shepard.

[00:25:58] He plays the engineer guy that makes things.

[00:26:02] The mad inventor.

[00:26:03] Yeah.

[00:26:03] So Jack Shepard, I know as Wycliffe.

[00:26:06] He's a British actor and he played, for many, many series, a police detective in one of these sort of police procedurals.

[00:26:15] Oh.

[00:26:15] And it's set in Cornwall and based on a series of books written by my dad's English teacher in Cornwall.

[00:26:23] Oh, wow.

[00:26:24] Okay.

[00:26:24] So I know Jack Shepard as Wycliffe.

[00:26:27] So to see Wycliffe building a speedboat on a penal colony was a bit of a moment for me.

[00:26:35] It was quite odd.

[00:26:36] Okay.

[00:26:37] Right.

[00:26:37] Yeah.

[00:26:38] Kevin Dillon as Casey was really great as well.

[00:26:40] This kind of really naive, like youngin.

[00:26:43] And also the warden, Michael Lerner as the warden.

[00:26:48] So this, I don't really understand his character, but I thought it fit.

[00:26:52] Michael Lerner had just been nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Barton Fink.

[00:26:58] Oh.

[00:26:59] And I think he was well known for playing this sort of officious authority figure who was slightly disturbing as well.

[00:27:06] And he plays it like a vicious bank manager.

[00:27:09] It does fit in with the theme of the movie that they're concerned about the corporatization of prisons.

[00:27:17] Yeah.

[00:27:17] I don't know if that was a hot topic in the early 90s because there weren't many private prisons around about that time.

[00:27:24] Even now, I checked only 8% of the prison population in the US is in a private prison.

[00:27:31] Oh, okay.

[00:27:32] According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

[00:27:35] Yeah.

[00:27:35] Compared with 18% in the UK and Australia.

[00:27:39] Oh, really?

[00:27:40] Yeah.

[00:27:40] Okay.

[00:27:41] There you go.

[00:27:42] Right.

[00:27:42] I think American prisons are a business though.

[00:27:45] I think they do make quite a lot of profit.

[00:27:47] They put them to work, don't they?

[00:27:49] Yeah.

[00:27:50] And they also imprison a much higher percentage of their population than anyone else in the world, I do believe.

[00:27:55] So, yeah.

[00:27:57] If you end up with an overwhelmingly black prison population and they seem to be working for nothing,

[00:28:02] then you're in slave trade territory again, aren't you really?

[00:28:07] Yeah.

[00:28:07] Which is worrying.

[00:28:09] So, yeah.

[00:28:09] The thing is, though, in this movie, they don't really go into what the evils of corporatized prison systems.

[00:28:16] No.

[00:28:17] No.

[00:28:17] There's not really much there other than, yeah, okay, they're dumping them on this island and that's bad and they want to expose the inhumanity of it.

[00:28:25] Yeah.

[00:28:25] But other than that, they don't really go into it as a theme.

[00:28:29] No, no.

[00:28:30] The prison aspect of this movie is a very small percentage of the movie.

[00:28:35] Yeah.

[00:28:35] You really only see it at the start and that's it.

[00:28:38] They get thrown on this island.

[00:28:40] I did feel like the premise of this movie, if you take away the prison part, it's just another post-apocalyptic movie.

[00:28:49] Yeah.

[00:28:49] It's just another movie where it's a bunch of people just surviving but also fighting each other.

[00:28:55] It's just Mad Max or Waterworld or The Postman.

[00:28:59] Again.

[00:28:59] Yeah.

[00:29:00] Except somehow it's a prison that is the reason why they're on this island.

[00:29:07] Yeah.

[00:29:07] It just feels like an excuse for a premise rather than a theme that's being explored in any meaningful way.

[00:29:14] Yeah.

[00:29:14] Because the presence of the prison or like the prison guards or the warden is very little on the island.

[00:29:22] Like they don't have any guards around the perimeter of the island or any battleships at sea.

[00:29:28] They send the helicopter there every now and again to check on them or to missile their little like setup.

[00:29:36] But that's pretty much it.

[00:29:38] There isn't much of a prison presence on the island.

[00:29:42] No.

[00:29:42] I guess it doesn't need to be.

[00:29:43] I mean, they're monitoring to see whether they attempt to escape.

[00:29:47] So when Wycliffe builds, I should say Dysart, when Dysart builds their attempt to do a covert speedboat with a V8 engine, the stealth speedboat doesn't quite make it.

[00:29:58] They send it out as like a drone, remote control drone, don't they?

[00:30:01] Or are there people in it?

[00:30:02] No.

[00:30:03] There are people in it.

[00:30:04] That's what was shocking.

[00:30:05] Yeah.

[00:30:06] Robbins asks about it and then they say that they'd been training for years for this one moment.

[00:30:12] And yeah, they all just get blown up.

[00:30:14] Which is really sad because you never see them.

[00:30:17] No.

[00:30:17] You never meet them.

[00:30:18] They're just unknown characters that are killed.

[00:30:22] Yeah.

[00:30:23] I thought it was quite shocking.

[00:30:24] It is.

[00:30:25] Yeah.

[00:30:30] It's pretty action packed and it's pretty gruesome.

[00:30:33] I mean, it doesn't pull its punches all that much.

[00:30:35] Yeah.

[00:30:36] There's actually a surprising amount of gore and scenes that you would expect to either cut away or they'll turn away so you don't see what's happening.

[00:30:47] But you see a lot of violence and a lot of graphic violence.

[00:30:51] A little bit surprising for action 90s to be that violent.

[00:30:56] It did feel like a very action-y 90s movie.

[00:30:59] Like I felt like it could have been another Bruce Willis movie or another Harrison Ford movie or, you know, another Sylvester Stallone movie.

[00:31:07] It felt very 90s in that respect.

[00:31:09] Yeah, it does.

[00:31:11] Yeah, it is surprisingly violent, as you say, because the 90s was sort of a period where the censors were really reining that in.

[00:31:18] It was a difficult time, especially for horror movies, which is why most 90s horror movies are pretty tame.

[00:31:24] Yeah.

[00:31:25] And I think it's because of the excesses in the 80s that they were really trying to reign it back.

[00:31:30] But there's a lot of neck breaking and decapitation.

[00:31:35] Yeah, a lot of decapitations.

[00:31:37] And the main character kills a lot of people.

[00:31:40] Yeah, I mean, that's what was kind of refreshing, though, because I kind of get sick of the main character having a conscience and never actually killing people.

[00:31:52] He just knocks them out or they accidentally die because they fall off a cliff or something.

[00:31:58] Yeah.

[00:31:58] But he's proper murdering people.

[00:32:01] Oh, yeah.

[00:32:01] He's breaking necks and stabbing people.

[00:32:04] This is, he's full on murder.

[00:32:06] From the get go, as soon as he arrives on the island, he's just murdering people.

[00:32:10] Yeah.

[00:32:11] It's not like revenge murder either.

[00:32:13] It's just like, I'm surviving.

[00:32:15] So I guess it's you rather than me.

[00:32:18] So yeah.

[00:32:19] Exactly.

[00:32:19] Stabby, stabby.

[00:32:20] Here I go.

[00:32:21] Yeah.

[00:32:22] The action scenes were great, though.

[00:32:23] Like quite huge.

[00:32:25] Like some of the siege scenes where American husband attack the village.

[00:32:31] This is like, wow, this is like medieval tactics.

[00:32:34] We're going with like, we're flaming arrows.

[00:32:38] We've got battering rams.

[00:32:40] Yeah.

[00:32:41] Yeah.

[00:32:41] It's like castle battles going on.

[00:32:45] Which again reminded me of Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.

[00:32:48] And what amazes me about all of it is the 90s.

[00:32:51] As Gayland Hurd says, they didn't have a big budget for visual effects.

[00:32:55] So they just had to build all of it.

[00:32:59] And it's huge, the scale of it.

[00:33:01] And when they are storming the castle, the number of extras, there are no digital extras here.

[00:33:07] This is 300 unemployed guys from Queensland who were up for wearing a loincloth and running around with a spear for a weekend.

[00:33:18] Yeah.

[00:33:18] And they were really convincing, too.

[00:33:21] I mean, the director, Martin Campbell, apparently would get on a bullhorn and shout, you know, lots of really encouraging stuff to whip them up and get them going.

[00:33:30] And then he'd shout action and off they would go.

[00:33:33] And kudos to the Australian extras.

[00:33:35] They went for it.

[00:33:36] Yeah.

[00:33:36] I read, I don't know whether this is true, but the extras were mainly European backpackers from the local backpacking hostels in and around Cairns.

[00:33:46] Really?

[00:33:47] North Queensland.

[00:33:49] Oh.

[00:33:50] 400 extras, apparently.

[00:33:52] Oh, that's amazing.

[00:33:53] I love 90s movies and the fact that, yeah, they didn't rely on CGI.

[00:33:58] Nowadays, like when we watch Season of Witch, you've got big battle scenes and all the sort of far away people, it's all CGI.

[00:34:06] It's just like duplicated one person times like a thousand in CGI.

[00:34:11] And it looks terrible.

[00:34:13] Yeah.

[00:34:13] Whereas here, you've got 400 actual extras running on a field, storming the village.

[00:34:20] It's amazing.

[00:34:21] And it looks amazing.

[00:34:23] Yeah.

[00:34:23] It's breathtaking stuff.

[00:34:24] And the production design both of the outsider's camp and of the insider's sort of hippie commune with windmills all made out of wood and raised levels and rope bridges.

[00:34:36] Yeah.

[00:34:37] You know, they've got a foundry.

[00:34:39] They've got a place where they're brewing hooch.

[00:34:42] And, you know, it's all real.

[00:34:44] They've built all of it.

[00:34:45] Which, you know, is great for a setting for your movie, for multiple scenes.

[00:34:50] Because this is a two-hour movie.

[00:34:52] There's lots of dialogue and character building scenes in between the action scenes.

[00:34:56] And then when the action kicks off, the scale of it is shocking.

[00:35:01] Yeah.

[00:35:01] For now.

[00:35:01] Because you're so used to just seeing three people in front of a green screen and a bunch of digital shit.

[00:35:06] Yeah, yeah.

[00:35:07] You've got huge battle scenes with 400 extras on location on full-sized sets.

[00:35:15] It's breathtaking.

[00:35:16] And it really is.

[00:35:17] And there are quite a few action scenes as well.

[00:35:20] You've got the one at the start with Robyns escaping Marek.

[00:35:24] And you've got the first big siege scene.

[00:35:26] And then you've got Robyns trying to get the distributor from Marek.

[00:35:31] And then Casey getting captured.

[00:35:34] And their sort of fight that they have to do.

[00:35:36] And then the last scene with the outsiders storming the village.

[00:35:41] But it's all a big trap.

[00:35:43] Yeah, it's a lot of really great set pieces.

[00:35:46] Yeah, they storm the castle a couple of times.

[00:35:48] Yeah, yeah.

[00:35:49] And that explosion.

[00:35:51] Oh, good grief.

[00:35:53] What is that weapon?

[00:35:55] So Robyns steals a weapon from Marek.

[00:35:58] And what is it?

[00:35:59] It's some sort of bazooka.

[00:36:01] I mean, they're all remarking on it and saying,

[00:36:03] Oh, you've got one of those.

[00:36:04] And it's confiscated as soon as he gets there.

[00:36:08] Yeah.

[00:36:08] And they keep it locked away.

[00:36:10] But then they give it back to him for this climactic battle.

[00:36:14] And my goodness, when he fires it.

[00:36:17] I'm surprised there's any of Queensland left after that went up.

[00:36:22] Yeah, it is huge.

[00:36:24] So they set up a trap.

[00:36:26] So they know that Marek is going to storm their village.

[00:36:29] So they set it up so that there's no one in the village.

[00:36:32] And Marek and all his men enter the village.

[00:36:36] They're all in the village.

[00:36:37] And then Robyns, on top of a tower, shoots this ridiculous, like, nuclear warhead rocket launcher at them.

[00:36:47] And everyone dies.

[00:36:49] Yeah.

[00:36:49] Like 400 people dead in an instant.

[00:36:53] Yeah.

[00:36:54] And it's the biggest explosion I have ever seen.

[00:36:57] On film.

[00:36:58] Yeah, it could well be.

[00:36:59] It's one of those ones where it's beautifully done.

[00:37:02] Yeah.

[00:37:02] It's got, you know, multiple levels to it and sort of a sequence to it.

[00:37:06] And then the bits where sort of like fireworks sparks fly up into the air as well.

[00:37:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:37:12] You know, they've shot the shit out of it.

[00:37:14] There's like 18 cameras recording this thing.

[00:37:16] Yeah.

[00:37:17] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:37:17] And you can see the shockwave going past some of the cameras too.

[00:37:21] This thing was big.

[00:37:22] It's huge.

[00:37:23] You probably heard it from New Zealand.

[00:37:26] It's just ridiculous.

[00:37:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:37:28] It is massive.

[00:37:30] It's massive.

[00:37:31] But it's a good payoff though.

[00:37:33] It is a great payoff.

[00:37:35] And some of the stunts as well.

[00:37:36] I mean, that high fall that Robyns does right at the very beginning.

[00:37:41] Yeah.

[00:37:41] Where they poison dart him or something to catch him.

[00:37:45] Yes.

[00:37:45] Merrick's men.

[00:37:46] And he just tips backwards and falls off this cliff into what was described by the director

[00:37:51] as the Grand Canyon of Queensland.

[00:37:54] I don't know exactly where it is.

[00:37:56] But that high fall.

[00:37:58] Good grief.

[00:38:00] Incredible stunt.

[00:38:01] Oh.

[00:38:02] And you watch him all the way down.

[00:38:03] Yeah.

[00:38:04] And what's amazing as well, you've got the cameraman on a sort of a rope that's also letting him

[00:38:11] fall.

[00:38:12] Yeah.

[00:38:12] And then it slows down and then the cameraman continues to follow the stuntman falling even

[00:38:18] further down this immense cliff into the water.

[00:38:22] It looks amazing.

[00:38:25] And the entire time you know it's not a dummy.

[00:38:28] Yeah.

[00:38:28] Because it's moving like a normal human.

[00:38:31] It doesn't look like a stiff dummy.

[00:38:33] Yeah.

[00:38:33] I mean, you can sort of tell that he's on a descender.

[00:38:36] So it was this descending rope technology where they are on a rope and it's letting them

[00:38:42] down at a speed that looks impressive.

[00:38:44] But once they're heading towards the impact zone, it slows them down.

[00:38:48] So they're not going to hurt themselves.

[00:38:50] So he still hits the water with a pretty big splash, but not one that would be fatal.

[00:38:55] Yeah.

[00:38:57] But it's an amazing stunt.

[00:38:58] I mean, you can see why, even though this movie was not a success.

[00:39:02] Oh.

[00:39:02] And I can talk about that.

[00:39:03] But you can see why Martin Campbell, the British director, who had really not done anything

[00:39:09] like this.

[00:39:10] He'd done a couple of sort of crime thrillers, I think, after a successful career in the

[00:39:15] UK, making dramas, I think most famously Edge of Darkness, which he later remade as a movie

[00:39:21] rather than a series with Mel Gibson.

[00:39:23] He was picked immediately after this to helm the new Bond movie with a new Bond, Pierce Brosnan,

[00:39:31] GoldenEye in 95.

[00:39:32] And you can see why.

[00:39:34] Yeah.

[00:39:34] You see all his films after this and it's an impressive resume.

[00:39:39] Like he did The Mask of Zorro, Vertical Limit, The Legend of Zorro, Casino Real.

[00:39:45] So another Bond film.

[00:39:46] For a new Bond again.

[00:39:47] Daniel Craig's first Bond movie.

[00:39:49] Yeah.

[00:39:50] That's right.

[00:39:51] So he's obviously gone on to better things.

[00:39:54] But it's surprising that this movie didn't become more famous.

[00:39:59] Like I do feel like the title is not great.

[00:40:02] No.

[00:40:03] I felt like the original name for it.

[00:40:04] So I think that they were going to call it Escape from Absalom or maybe some countries.

[00:40:10] That's its title.

[00:40:11] It is.

[00:40:11] I think that works better than No Escape.

[00:40:14] Yeah.

[00:40:14] I think it does.

[00:40:15] It's a bit too generic, isn't it?

[00:40:17] It's not clear what it is.

[00:40:18] Yeah.

[00:40:19] Well, if you're going into it thinking, oh, this is going to be like a Shawshank Redemption

[00:40:23] movie.

[00:40:24] It's clearly not.

[00:40:25] No.

[00:40:28] No.

[00:40:28] But it just didn't find its audience.

[00:40:30] And I don't know why it was released in 1,765 theatres in April 1994.

[00:40:39] And it hit the charts at number two, just behind Four Weddings and a Funeral, which was still

[00:40:45] raking in cash on its eighth week of release at number one.

[00:40:49] Number three was Bad Girls, the Western.

[00:40:52] Okay.

[00:40:53] Yeah.

[00:40:54] I don't think I've seen that.

[00:40:55] No, me neither.

[00:40:56] And then it was pushed into third place the following week by a Joe Pesci University comedy

[00:41:02] called With Honours, which grossed 20 million in the end.

[00:41:07] Whereas No Escape grossed just 15 million on its 20 million budget and then dropped out

[00:41:13] of the charts.

[00:41:14] Wow.

[00:41:15] And people have sort of forgotten it, I think.

[00:41:18] Yeah.

[00:41:18] That's surprising.

[00:41:19] Because it's like even filmmaking wise, it's a really well made movie.

[00:41:24] Even though it's got a lower budget than some of the other blockbusters of the time,

[00:41:28] it doesn't look like it.

[00:41:30] No.

[00:41:30] Like it really utilizes every cent of its budget.

[00:41:34] And it looks amazing.

[00:41:36] Production design, location.

[00:41:39] I heard that it rained for most of filming.

[00:41:42] Yeah.

[00:41:42] So it was incredibly hard just to get what they got.

[00:41:46] And despite all that, it looks like a really well made movie.

[00:41:50] Yeah.

[00:41:50] That was the biggest hazard that they faced, I think.

[00:41:52] They were worried because not being natives of Australia, any of the production crew,

[00:41:58] they'd looked up and found out that 14 of the world's 22 most venomous snakes were in the

[00:42:05] area that they were going to be filming.

[00:42:07] Yeah.

[00:42:08] And they did occasionally come across one or two things, but they weren't really bothered

[00:42:14] by anything.

[00:42:15] There were no injuries or significant problems on set at all, which when you consider the

[00:42:21] number of stunts and all of the action and the scale of it and the fact that so much of

[00:42:26] it was being done by backpackers from local hostels.

[00:42:31] Yeah.

[00:42:32] Yeah.

[00:42:32] Just a few bumps and bruises and cuts, the stunt coordinator said.

[00:42:36] Nothing serious at all.

[00:42:37] Yeah.

[00:42:38] Amazing.

[00:42:38] I believe the rain that they experienced as well because Queensland is notorious for having

[00:42:44] a very wet season.

[00:42:46] And I'm assuming they filmed during the wet season.

[00:42:49] Right.

[00:42:50] Yeah.

[00:42:50] It's just nonstop.

[00:42:53] Yeah.

[00:42:53] That was their biggest problem.

[00:42:54] It was just drizzling the whole time, apparently.

[00:42:57] Whoa.

[00:42:58] Yeah.

[00:43:00] Now it's time for Random Trivia.

[00:43:03] Okay, Conrad, it's trivia time.

[00:43:05] What have you got for us found next to a distributor today?

[00:43:10] Well, this is one of those casting trivia pieces.

[00:43:15] I always love those sort of who could have been in a particular role.

[00:43:19] So when they were casting for this, two of the people who came in were a young man called

[00:43:26] Mark Wahlberg who wanted to be in the movie Marky Mark.

[00:43:31] Yes.

[00:43:32] And he was quite a popular choice amongst the producers at the time.

[00:43:36] But Campbell wanted a young Australian actor who hadn't really broken out yet by the name

[00:43:43] of Russell Crowe.

[00:43:45] Oh, wow.

[00:43:46] Yeah.

[00:43:47] To play which character?

[00:43:48] To play Robbins, to play the lead.

[00:43:51] Oh, wow.

[00:43:51] But that was a no-go with the suits because he was unknown and therefore could not be top

[00:43:58] billing in this action movie.

[00:44:00] But he would have been perfect.

[00:44:03] Yeah, he would have been.

[00:44:04] I don't think we've seen Russell Crowe in a dystopian future movie, have we?

[00:44:10] No, I don't think so.

[00:44:11] But certainly playing this sort of wounded ex-military figure on a path for revenge and redemption.

[00:44:18] I mean, he would then do that in the 2000s in Gladiator and achieve worldwide international

[00:44:24] acclaim.

[00:44:25] Yeah.

[00:44:26] So, yeah.

[00:44:27] Yeah.

[00:44:28] But no, it wasn't to be.

[00:44:31] And that's our trivia.

[00:44:32] It is.

[00:44:38] So, the music in the film is by a New Zealander, Graham Revell.

[00:44:44] Is he a New Zealander?

[00:44:45] I didn't know that.

[00:44:46] Yes.

[00:44:47] Yeah, he is.

[00:44:48] And I think after doing Dead Calm, he went on to do a whole load of big blockbusting movies,

[00:44:55] big sci-fi action, even some horror.

[00:44:57] Yeah.

[00:44:58] He did Strange Days.

[00:44:59] Yeah, he did.

[00:44:59] Didn't he?

[00:45:00] Yeah.

[00:45:01] I mean, his filmography is insane.

[00:45:03] You've got just a lot.

[00:45:05] So much as Spawn, Tank Girl, From Dusk Till Dawn, Basketball Diaries, Hard Target, Child's

[00:45:14] Play 2, which is my favorite Child's Play movie.

[00:45:17] Oh.

[00:45:18] You've got Sin City, Eon Flux.

[00:45:21] The Crow.

[00:45:22] The Crow.

[00:45:23] Yes.

[00:45:24] The Ruins, a movie I just recently watched, I really liked.

[00:45:28] Tomb Raider.

[00:45:29] Yeah, he's done a lot.

[00:45:31] I don't know whether I really noticed the score in this movie.

[00:45:35] It was good.

[00:45:36] There are moments of comedy.

[00:45:38] He's got sort of like slide guitar, almost like bluesy numbers in there.

[00:45:43] Yeah.

[00:45:44] For some of the sort of more comedic aspects of the film.

[00:45:47] Yeah.

[00:45:47] What did you think about the score?

[00:45:49] I liked the scale of it because it's a big action adventure score with a large orchestra

[00:45:54] for the most part.

[00:45:55] But the thing that really caught my ear is the thing that I thought Graham Revell really

[00:45:58] brought to those sorts of scores in the 90s and then into the noughties, which was he

[00:46:04] used a lot of electronic instruments and particularly sampling in interesting ways to add extra flavors

[00:46:11] to it.

[00:46:11] So I noticed when Robbins first arrives on the island, Graham Revell's cue there is doing

[00:46:17] some interesting things with sampled vocalizations to sort of enhance the idea of this being a strange

[00:46:24] place and there being, you know, him being surrounded by dangerous, aggressive other people.

[00:46:30] So yeah, he does some interesting stuff with it.

[00:46:33] But I can't say I came away humming a theme or thinking that cue was great.

[00:46:40] A lot of woodwinds for the sort of contemplative stuff for the main character when he's flying

[00:46:45] away in the helicopter, which I was surprised by, you know, surprisingly tender for an action

[00:46:50] movie.

[00:46:51] Yeah.

[00:46:52] I thought it worked really well.

[00:46:54] Yeah.

[00:46:54] I can't say I found it particularly memorable.

[00:46:56] I listened to it.

[00:46:57] It's on Spotify or Apple Music if you want to hear it.

[00:47:00] Okay.

[00:47:01] But yeah, nothing really stuck out to me.

[00:47:02] I mean, that was my takeaway as well.

[00:47:05] It worked, but nothing really stood out and not terribly thematic as well.

[00:47:13] It worked.

[00:47:14] It worked.

[00:47:15] Yeah.

[00:47:15] I did think the final scene, right?

[00:47:17] So they've escaped.

[00:47:19] They've hijacked this helicopter, killed everyone and shoved the warden and King.

[00:47:26] So King turned out to be a spy for the warden.

[00:47:30] Yes.

[00:47:30] He's one of the greeting crew.

[00:47:33] He takes in the new people, newcomers of the village and shows them, I don't know, the

[00:47:40] ways of the village.

[00:47:41] But he turns out to be the spy.

[00:47:43] And so him and the warden are left to fend for themselves against the outsiders.

[00:47:48] And the rest of the characters fly away into the sunset in the helicopter.

[00:47:55] And I thought, but they're just going to go to another prison, aren't they?

[00:47:58] They are still criminals.

[00:48:00] Yeah, there is still.

[00:48:01] They're not going to just be pardoned and just let out into society.

[00:48:05] They're still the worst of the worst.

[00:48:08] Yeah.

[00:48:08] Some of the crimes are quite horrific.

[00:48:11] You've got Dysart, who made a bomb that killed like 50 people or something.

[00:48:18] Yeah.

[00:48:18] You've got Casey, who was a getaway driver or a driver for a kidnapping.

[00:48:23] It's just horrible.

[00:48:25] Yeah.

[00:48:25] So these are not nice people at the end of the day.

[00:48:29] Well, yeah, but they're all accessories.

[00:48:30] That's the thing that they did with it.

[00:48:32] So it's like Casey, he's not a bad criminal.

[00:48:35] He just drove the bad criminals.

[00:48:38] Yeah.

[00:48:39] And Dysart, he's not a bad criminal.

[00:48:41] He just supplied the bad criminal with it.

[00:48:44] Yeah, sure.

[00:48:45] So they're all sort of innocent adjacent.

[00:48:47] Yeah.

[00:48:48] They haven't actually killed or kidnapped or raped anyone.

[00:48:52] They've just given the means for other people to do that.

[00:48:56] Yeah.

[00:48:56] And it's like our main character.

[00:48:58] He has his Naam flashback while he's staring into the exhaust of Wycliffe's speedboat, as one does.

[00:49:06] Yeah.

[00:49:06] And it's, you know, women and children being napalmed or something, which obviously he participated in and tried to raise awareness of afterwards.

[00:49:16] And then it was all covered up.

[00:49:17] So he blew his commanding officer's brains out.

[00:49:19] So, you know, he inadvertently, unwillingly participated in a war crime and then got punished for trying to whistleblow about it.

[00:49:28] Yeah.

[00:49:29] So, you know, he's a criminal with a conscience who didn't really want to do his crime.

[00:49:32] And that's kind of what all of the hippies are.

[00:49:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:49:37] This is the thing with the villain being so entertaining and all of his entourage being these visually interesting, dangerous, weird sort of people with tattoos and piercings.

[00:49:51] Yeah, yeah.

[00:49:52] Culturally appropriated hairstyles.

[00:49:54] And they're kind of coded as native as well, which is, you know, there are all sorts of nativist cliches in there which are not good.

[00:50:02] For some reason, if you go bad, you quote unquote regress to something that looks like indigenous people, which is not good.

[00:50:10] Not good symbolism at all.

[00:50:12] Whereas you've got the people in the chunky knit pastels with their windmills in the middle and they're sort of like a hippie commune.

[00:50:21] And it's the sort of thing that happened in Star Trek a lot, like Star Trek Insurrection in 1998.

[00:50:26] Yeah.

[00:50:26] Had these people in faded pastels all at peace with themselves.

[00:50:30] And I just fucking hated that.

[00:50:33] I wanted them to get killed by the punks with the piercings.

[00:50:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:50:37] There's kind of an, I don't know, colonialist thing going on that I just don't like.

[00:50:42] And just I find them sort of sycophantic and awful and want them to die.

[00:50:46] Yeah.

[00:50:47] I do.

[00:50:48] Yeah, I do agree.

[00:50:50] I feel like that's where War World is different because everyone just looks like trash.

[00:50:55] Yeah, they do.

[00:50:56] Because they're just, you know, they're wearing whatever they can find floating in the ocean.

[00:51:00] And whereas, yeah, yeah, how are the insiders in this movie all dressed like they've woven wool from an actual sheep?

[00:51:10] Whereas everyone else looks like they're just like picking up bits of rubbish and sticking it to their faces.

[00:51:17] Yeah.

[00:51:18] Or just a triangle that they can cover their nuts with.

[00:51:21] Yeah.

[00:51:21] But other than that, they just let it all hang out.

[00:51:24] Yeah, exactly.

[00:51:25] Yeah.

[00:51:26] That's one part of it that I'm not all that fond of.

[00:51:28] Yeah, I didn't even pick that.

[00:51:30] That's funny.

[00:51:31] Yeah.

[00:51:34] One funny thing I did note is Australia originally was a penal colony, a prison that they used to ship convicts to.

[00:51:45] That's a good point.

[00:51:46] And this movie was filmed in Australia.

[00:51:48] Yeah.

[00:51:49] Coincidence.

[00:51:50] I don't know.

[00:51:52] Yeah.

[00:51:52] Maybe.

[00:51:52] Yeah.

[00:51:53] That makes the whole colonialist theme that runs through even worse when you think about it.

[00:51:59] Yeah.

[00:51:59] I hadn't realised.

[00:52:00] Yeah.

[00:52:01] There was one Australian actor or character.

[00:52:04] So that kind of mad thou mate that he has.

[00:52:07] Yes.

[00:52:08] That Robbins is boarded up with.

[00:52:10] But you never see him again.

[00:52:12] I thought he was going to pop up again.

[00:52:13] But you don't see that character ever again.

[00:52:16] No.

[00:52:16] Did he die?

[00:52:17] He was the one that was worried about their brains being red.

[00:52:20] Yeah.

[00:52:20] Or something.

[00:52:21] Yeah.

[00:52:22] Something like that.

[00:52:23] Some sort of mind reading devices in the walls.

[00:52:25] Yeah.

[00:52:25] He lost it.

[00:52:26] Poor guy.

[00:52:28] I mean, when the movie did start and it was in Set in the Prison, I kind of wanted, I wouldn't mind watching that movie.

[00:52:35] Whatever that would have been.

[00:52:37] Well, that's Fortress.

[00:52:38] That is Fortress?

[00:52:39] Okay.

[00:52:40] Yeah.

[00:52:40] Maybe I should just watch Fortress.

[00:52:42] So I was looking forward to Fortress and it wasn't Fortress.

[00:52:47] Coming to you live from the Movie Oobly at Theatre, it's the prestigious Moobly Awards.

[00:52:57] Oh yes, Moobly Awards time.

[00:52:59] This segment is our chance to nominate our favourite siege tactical parts of the film in a number of not so island getaway categories.

[00:53:09] Best quote.

[00:53:11] My favourite quote in the film, I mean, I didn't think much of the dialogue.

[00:53:15] I know you liked it more than I did.

[00:53:17] I did.

[00:53:18] Yes.

[00:53:18] But the only sort of semi-profound statement that comes out of Robin's mouth is when he is objecting to the fact that they have exiled someone from the hippie commune because they fell asleep on their watch or something like that.

[00:53:33] Yeah, that's right.

[00:53:34] And yeah, Lance Henriksen's boss, the father, says that that's just the way that we do it.

[00:53:40] And Robin says, that's what happens to innocent people.

[00:53:44] They're always dying for someone else's idea of right or wrong.

[00:53:49] Yeah.

[00:53:50] Yeah.

[00:53:51] I thought a lot of the dialogue was quite kind of profound and thought provoking.

[00:53:57] Especially the father.

[00:53:59] So everything he says seems to have a sort of a metaphorical meaning for something else.

[00:54:05] But he delivers a eulogy as they burn the dead after one of the battles.

[00:54:11] And he says,

[00:54:37] That last sentiment is really nice, actually.

[00:54:40] That's when we'll miss their contribution.

[00:54:43] Yeah.

[00:54:44] Best hair or costume.

[00:54:47] I do have to mention Marek with his trimmed beard, but then he's got dreadlocks and also this kind of weird nose bridge piercings.

[00:54:56] There's like four sort of metal implants on the bridge of his nose.

[00:55:01] It did remind me of a character from the 2000s movie, Battlefield Earth.

[00:55:08] Yes.

[00:55:09] So John Travolta's look is very similar.

[00:55:11] That's exactly what I wrote down.

[00:55:13] Yeah.

[00:55:14] Marek's three barbell bridge piercing with Battlefield Earth white villain dreadlocks.

[00:55:19] Yes.

[00:55:20] It's a look, isn't it?

[00:55:21] It is a look.

[00:55:22] Yeah.

[00:55:22] I do want to watch Battlefield Earth eventually.

[00:55:25] I know it's bad, but I do want to experience it.

[00:55:29] It's not getting out of the yulogy, I don't think.

[00:55:32] It's notoriously bad.

[00:55:34] Yes.

[00:55:35] Most 90s moment.

[00:55:38] I was going to say prison movies.

[00:55:40] And I don't know why in the 90s this was a big thing.

[00:55:44] Because you had the sci-fi prison movies.

[00:55:46] You had Moon 44, the Roland Emmerich movie from 1990.

[00:55:51] Alien 3 from 92.

[00:55:53] Oh, yes.

[00:55:54] And of course, Fortress, 92, Stuart Gordon, which I thought this film was.

[00:55:59] Whoops.

[00:56:00] But also you had dramas like Shawshank and The Green Mile and American History X with Edward Norton.

[00:56:07] Yeah.

[00:56:08] And action movies like Con Air and The Rock, where they try to break into prison, oddly enough.

[00:56:15] So, yeah, just lots of prison movies in the 90s.

[00:56:19] I don't know what our issue was there.

[00:56:21] I didn't even think about that.

[00:56:23] Yeah, that is so true.

[00:56:25] It's very peculiar.

[00:56:27] I mean, for me, this movie is very 90s.

[00:56:30] There's a lot of 90s tropes.

[00:56:34] We have mentioned them before.

[00:56:36] Some sort of zip line is featured in this movie.

[00:56:40] Yes.

[00:56:41] Yes, I wrote that down.

[00:56:42] Also, I found 90s movies was all about quite charming, sophisticated villains.

[00:56:48] So, I think of Gary Oldman's characters in, like, Leon the Professional or The Fifth Element.

[00:56:55] Also, Dennis Hopper in Waterworld and Will Patton in The Postman.

[00:57:00] Or even, like, Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs in 1991.

[00:57:05] Yeah, that's very true.

[00:57:06] Yeah, you've got these much more educated, sophisticated villains that came out in the 90s.

[00:57:12] Yeah.

[00:57:13] Favourite scene!

[00:57:14] I love what I would coin as the Rambo scene with Robbins escaping Merrick and his crew.

[00:57:21] Yeah.

[00:57:22] Like, there's just so much going on.

[00:57:24] And how there are booby traps set up.

[00:57:26] But then he realises that they're booby traps and uses them against the crew.

[00:57:30] And, yeah, there's a lot of murder.

[00:57:32] So much murder happening in there.

[00:57:35] But I do feel like it does end in a bit of a cliché at the end of a cliff.

[00:57:41] Where he falls off and escapes because he survives.

[00:57:45] Because he falls into water.

[00:57:47] But, yeah, I did love that whole sequence.

[00:57:50] It was thrilling.

[00:57:53] Yeah.

[00:57:54] Favourite scene for you?

[00:57:54] My favourite scene was Merrick's final attack on the hippie encampment.

[00:58:02] Because it starts with this misty, still morning.

[00:58:05] Robbins walks out for a breath of fresh air.

[00:58:09] He finds a stick, like a stump with a blanket over it or something.

[00:58:14] And he takes it off and he uncovers the severed head of, like, this mole.

[00:58:19] This double agent they've had in the Outsiders tribe or what have you.

[00:58:24] And then in the same shot, the tree line just erupts with screaming warriors running at full speed towards him.

[00:58:35] Just the scale of it.

[00:58:36] And it's all in one shot.

[00:58:38] So it's just amazing.

[00:58:39] I just thought this is amazing.

[00:58:41] Yes.

[00:58:41] Most cliché moment.

[00:58:44] It is quite a cliché movie.

[00:58:46] It's full of tropes.

[00:58:46] But one I did want to bring to light is the big villain leaving the killing of the main character to one of his henchmen and just walking off.

[00:58:57] And, of course, he's going to get away.

[00:59:00] He's going to escape.

[00:59:01] Like, just like, the villain just needs to kill the main character.

[00:59:07] Don't leave it to any of your, like, lackeys.

[00:59:10] They're not going to get it done right.

[00:59:12] It's not going to happen.

[00:59:13] He's going to escape.

[00:59:14] Don't delegate.

[00:59:18] Yeah, it's very true.

[00:59:20] It is a cliché.

[00:59:22] My cliché is what happens to the villain at the end, which is sometimes known as the Disney villain death, which is the high fall death.

[00:59:32] Ah, yes.

[00:59:32] Which just has to happen.

[00:59:34] Happened to Alan Rickman at the end of Die Hard.

[00:59:36] It's been happening to villains ever since.

[00:59:38] They fall off a great height.

[00:59:40] And in this case, he's impaled on a giant half-submerged tree stump.

[00:59:45] Yeah.

[00:59:46] Which, uh, that's a shocker.

[00:59:49] I mean, I would have to include that as one of my favourite special effects because you see him getting impaled.

[00:59:55] Like, it's not just he falls off the edge, you don't see anything, and then it pans down and he's already impaled.

[01:00:03] You see him being impaled by the stick and it's gruesome.

[01:00:10] Yeah.

[01:00:10] It's not a good way to die.

[01:00:12] Not at all.

[01:00:13] Best special effect.

[01:00:15] So my favourite special effect is obviously the explosion, if we're talking about practical special effects.

[01:00:22] But the one moment that I really wanted to highlight is sort of a combination of special effect and stunt,

[01:00:28] which is this guy that's, uh, I think he's like patrolling the walls of the encampment.

[01:00:36] And he yawns, and as he yawns, he gets a flaming arrow in the mouth.

[01:00:43] Live.

[01:00:44] This happens in one seamless shot.

[01:00:47] Yeah.

[01:00:48] It's amazing.

[01:00:49] Yeah.

[01:00:50] I was going to mention that as the funniest moment because I just cracked up at that point.

[01:00:56] Like, how is that possible?

[01:00:58] Because it looks, I just, I thought, oh, maybe they did that by doing it in reverse and just having a flaming arrow in his mouth and just pulled it out.

[01:01:08] But you can see arrows in the background going forwards.

[01:01:12] So that's an in-camera practical effect played, like, forwards that actually happened.

[01:01:19] And I don't know how they did that.

[01:01:22] So the stunt coordinator says that, uh, he fired the arrow himself and he had a stunt guy who really trusted him.

[01:01:30] And he had a piece of balsa wood in the back of his mouth and his mouth covered in that sort of, uh, fire eaters gel that prevents you from being burned.

[01:01:41] Yeah.

[01:01:42] And he said, you've just got to trust me.

[01:01:44] I've got good aim.

[01:01:46] I'm going to shoot it in there.

[01:01:47] And he, uh, yeah, he got it in there.

[01:01:50] But how did they cover up the wood?

[01:01:53] It's just in the back of his mouth.

[01:01:55] Like, he's like holding it on the back of his tongue.

[01:01:57] Wow.

[01:01:58] That's, that's incredible.

[01:02:00] I know.

[01:02:01] It's an amazing shot.

[01:02:04] Favourite sound effect.

[01:02:06] My favourite sound effect comes from your favourite scene, which is Robin's escaping from Merrick the first time.

[01:02:13] Ah, yes.

[01:02:14] And as you said, whole lot of murder happening in that scene.

[01:02:16] And in one particular case, he trips one of Merrick's henchmen and snaps his neck with one quick twist.

[01:02:25] And it sounds like he has snapped an entire bundle of firewood.

[01:02:30] It's really like, I don't know what this guy's neck was made out of, but you know, it's really crunchy and deep and loud.

[01:02:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:02:41] Yeah.

[01:02:43] That's great.

[01:02:44] My favourite sound effect is the high-pitched squeal that the rocket launcher seems to make when it's been armed.

[01:02:53] So it has kind of an ascending high-pitched squealing sound.

[01:02:59] I don't know why, but it happens.

[01:03:02] And I really enjoyed it.

[01:03:04] Right.

[01:03:05] Most funniest moment.

[01:03:07] I've already said mine.

[01:03:08] So the fiery arrow to the mouth.

[01:03:13] You have a very interesting sense of view.

[01:03:18] For me, it was a moment that was obviously meant to be funny, which is when Robbins kills the guy he's meant to be having a gladiatorial battle with over a pool of scummy water.

[01:03:31] And he kills him while the guy's just sort of screaming at him to intimidate him.

[01:03:36] It's such an Indiana Jones move.

[01:03:39] That's what I thought as well.

[01:03:41] Yeah.

[01:03:42] Just wait until the guy's showing off and just kill him as he can get out of there.

[01:03:47] Yeah.

[01:03:48] What makes it, adds the cherry on top, is that he falls down, legs either side of this log that they're standing on, and crushes his nuts as well.

[01:03:56] So he gets impaled on a machete and crushes his nuts before he slides gently into the scummy water.

[01:04:04] Yeah, yeah.

[01:04:05] Not great.

[01:04:05] It was a funny scene, though.

[01:04:07] Enjoyed it.

[01:04:08] It was.

[01:04:08] It did make me laugh.

[01:04:11] And that's all Moobly.

[01:04:12] Yes.

[01:04:17] Hello, I'm Lance Guest, and you're listening to Movie Oobliette.

[01:04:51] Oh yes, Conrad, it's that time.

[01:04:54] What's your final take on it, Conrad?

[01:04:56] Well, it's got lots of those things that we always celebrate.

[01:05:00] It's a movie from the 90s.

[01:05:02] It's got lots of location shooting.

[01:05:04] It's a beautiful location in Australia.

[01:05:07] It's very well shot.

[01:05:10] It's got a fantastic ensemble cast.

[01:05:13] It's got a fantastic cast.

[01:05:13] All guys, all the sort of people to expect from these sort of B-movies, like Lance Henriksen is in there.

[01:05:20] And it's got some amazing action sequences, the sort of thing that we don't really get anymore.

[01:05:27] Some incredible stunts.

[01:05:29] And the central storyline, although they don't really delve into any themes in a huge way, it does have a character arc for the main character.

[01:05:38] And it does have a great ensemble cast around that create great moments, particularly the villain who, as per usual in these 90s thrillers, sort of outshines the main character.

[01:05:52] I have to say, it's not my type of film.

[01:05:56] It doesn't really tick any boxes for me.

[01:05:58] This is the sort of thing like Waterworld and The Postman that it just doesn't do anything for me.

[01:06:04] This sort of outside adventure-y, Rambo-y type of action movies.

[01:06:09] And this one is quite violent, which is surprising.

[01:06:13] But while watching it, I was just thinking, you know, like Serge always says, does it achieve what it wanted to achieve?

[01:06:20] And yes, it does.

[01:06:20] And it does it very well.

[01:06:22] It's easy to see why Martin Campbell was hired to do the next Bond movie.

[01:06:26] And I'm just shocked that it hasn't maintained a reputation amongst action aficionados or sci-fi action aficionados.

[01:06:36] It really deserved a better run than it did because there's nothing wrong with it.

[01:06:41] It's just a big dumb action movie and it's not that dumb.

[01:06:46] So, yeah, I don't know why it wasn't more successful.

[01:06:50] I would certainly recommend it for people who love this sort of thing.

[01:06:53] Yeah, for me, I think it does tickle the boxes.

[01:06:58] It really does.

[01:06:59] I don't think it's a hugely original film.

[01:07:03] It's obviously wearing its influences on its sleeve.

[01:07:07] But I enjoyed it.

[01:07:11] Comparing it to The Postman and Waterworld, this one far exceeds in terms of entertainment value.

[01:07:20] And I loved the payoff at the end.

[01:07:22] And there was a sense of triumph.

[01:07:24] There was a sense of, like, we have defeated evil and we're riding out into the sunset and happy endings.

[01:07:32] Like, it really felt like they escaped, essentially.

[01:07:37] That's the premise of the movie.

[01:07:40] I enjoyed every moment of the movie.

[01:07:43] In terms of, like, action, this is, like, bread and butter for me.

[01:07:46] I grew up on action movies like this.

[01:07:49] I wish I'd seen this in the 90s.

[01:07:51] I would have loved it.

[01:07:52] And I really enjoyed it this time.

[01:07:55] So, I'm very happy that this was nominated for the podcast.

[01:07:59] I would highly recommend this movie.

[01:08:02] Yeah.

[01:08:03] It was a thrill to watch in 4K as well, which I bought right after Boss Salvage nominated it the first time when I realised it had been remastered in 4K.

[01:08:11] Because it looks stunning.

[01:08:13] It really does look beautiful.

[01:08:15] Yeah.

[01:08:16] I mean, location shooting alone is, it's exquisite, really.

[01:08:21] It's amazing.

[01:08:23] It's Queensland.

[01:08:24] You can't go wrong.

[01:08:25] No.

[01:08:25] Well, it's not an ugly place, is it?

[01:08:27] There's all of those beautiful sunsets and magic hour shots, lots of oranges and pink skies.

[01:08:33] It's gorgeous.

[01:08:35] Yeah.