FLED (1996) - Movie Review

Director: Kevin Hooks
Starring: Stephen Baldwin, Laurence Fishburne, Will Patton, Robert John Burke, Salma Hayek
Genre: Action, Thriller, Crime
Writer: Preston A. Whitmore II
Runtime: 98 min
Rated: R for strong violence and language, and for some nudity
Buy This Movie: Blu-ray (Amazon), DVD (Amazon), Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV

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Synopsis:

Laurence Fishburne and Stephen Baldwin are convicts on the run in Fled. Handcuffed together on work detail, prisoners Charles Piper (Fishburne, The Matrix) and Mark Dodge (Baldwin, The Usual Suspects) flee the scene of a massacre by a fellow inmate who has single-handedly eliminated half of the prison guards. In no time the Attorney General's office, with a keen interest in the escaped Dodge, assigns a U.S. Marshal (Robert John Burke, 2 Guns) to track down the prisoners. Dodge, as it turns out, holds a key piece of evidence on a disc, which if discovered, could bring down some very powerful people. All is not as it seems in the action-packed Fled, where double-crosses, dual identities, corrupt officials and a myriad of twists and turns abound. In a film that pays homage to The Defiant Ones and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, director Kevin Hooks (Passenger 57) working from a screenplay by Preston A. Whitemore II, brings together a talented cast that includes Will Patton (No Way Out, TV's Falling Skies), Salma Hayek (Frida, Bandidas), David Dukes (Date With An Angel) and Michael Nadar (The Trip, TV's Dynasty).

Review:

The '90s were a fun time for action movies. I watched some of the loudest, rowdiest, testosterone-fueled pieces of entertainment both in theaters and on video, and thoroughly enjoyed the simple, well-shot, hilariously over-the-top spectacle they had to offer. But those were the good ones. "Fled" falls short of that category.

Baldwin and Fishburne find themselves stuck in a disfunctional buddy action movie that is not funny, clever or original. They try their hardest but just don't have enough chemistry together. Patton, Burke and Hayek are all fine, despite not having patricularly memorable characters, but it quickly becomes clear that no amount of talent can rescue the incredibly lame script.

The writing is the worst offender here. Characters behave like idiots in service of the plot, characterizations are flat and the dialogue is terrible. It's hard to build a successful film on such a shoddy foundation. However, for action fans there's plenty to enjoy as director Kevin Hooks orchestrates explosions, fist fights, gun fights, car chases and bike chases, all appropriately violent. This is an R-rated movie after all, so on that front it delivers the goods. Some of the set pieces look good, others not so much. The movie leans heavily into direct-to-video territory at times, probably due to its somewhat modest $25 million budget, and Hooks tries his best to emulate better action filmmakers of the era, like John Woo and Michael Bay, but the final product is underwhelming at best.

It's not a movie I can recommend, but fans of old school action flicks might have some fun with it as there's definitely a lot you can poke fun at, and it is pretty short. For everyone else, you can do much better than this.

SCORE: 5/10