Fled - Flucht nach Plan

As with many movies, as long as the viewer doesn't read too much into the movie you will do OK! Its a fun fast paced road movie-ish, fugitive styled chase movie.

It's well filmed, and slickly edited for a low budget chase flick.The acting is simply and solidly done even if the dialogue is a tad cheesy. Steven Baldwin is the token down at the heel hero, Laurence Fishburne is cool as the mentor type character, pulling the hero out of one fix after another. Salma Hayek is as stunning as ever but the best character is Gib played by Will Hatton, a highly likable character whos putting the puzzle together as the heros run around.

Not a classic but worth a late night look see when you get home from the pub with a bag of munchies.

The unlikeliest of partners, Laurence Fishburne and Stephen Baldwin are chained together and make a jail break together from a Georgia road gang. It's now the Nineties and objections about a black and white convict being chained together are now passé. Even with race not a really big issue with these two guys as it was in The Defiant Ones, they've still got a lot of other problems.

The most curious thing about this is the interest the Feds have in this jailbreak. They're keeping the Atlanta PD cop who busted Baldwin in the loop, but at a distance and this arouses Will Patton's curiosity no end. US Marshal Robert John Burke is playing things way too close to the vest to suit Patton.

Baldwin's who they're after. He's a computer hacker who hacked into a holding company that the Cuban Mafia owns and ripped off 25 million dollars. The local Cuban don, Michael Nader, wants him real bad. The wild thing in this film is that he's the only one in the cast who is what he says he is.

A couple of current beauties, Selma Hayek and Brittany Powell, decorate this film as love interests for both Fisburne and Baldwin. Hayek is introduced rather clumsily into the situation that our escapees find themselves in.

In fact the film, enjoyable though it is in many places, could have been a lot better with a much tighter script. Director Kevin Hooks did a good job with what he was given. In fact Kevin Hooks got to cast his dad Robert Hooks in a role as the Atlanta PD supervisor for Patton.

Fled is not a bad film, it could have used a lot of improvement though in the writing.

Mindless chasing and shooting. This one leaves plenty of your mind unoccupied to wonder such things as: How can a guy shoot a three-quarter inch rope with a handgun and miss everything with a shotgun? Why is RuPaul in this movie for 15 seconds? Would the feds really honour a verbal agreement to let you off after you've shot up a lot of folks and a lot of Atlanta? Could a limo really keep up with a Ducatti? Is it true that all you've got to do to get a semi out of your way is to lean on the horn?

Will Patton is one of our finest actors, having blessed the screen with a variety of memorable characters. Unfortunately, most of his performances seem to be in movies like this: generic action films which nobody has any need to remember. Sure, he gets to show up in great movies (NO WAY OUT), good movies (REMEMBER THE TITANS), and popular movies (ARMAGEDDON), but the man is a working actor who ain't embraced by the masses, so he also has to make movies like this. Not that this is a painfully bad movie... it's just so darn generic. And the testament to the man's performance is that there is nothing on paper that should make this a particularly great role. But darn it if he isn't the moral center of the movie.

If you don't know who this guy is, you can skip the movie with a clear conscience. But if you are a fan of the man, this performance is one of his best.

Fled is a cheerfully illogical actioner which rattles along at a seriously rapid pace without ever pausing for breath. It's stupid and spectacular in equal measure.

The plot hardly seems important, but for what it's worth here it is: a Cuban mafia boss has foolishly allowed himself to leave some incriminating evidence on a computer disk. The only guy who knows where the whereabouts of the disk is in a chain gang in the Deep South. An undercover cop is sent to the chain gang to find out where the disk is, and to keep the guy alive when the Cuban hitmen turn up to silence him.

The first half of the movie borrows liberally from The Defiant Ones, with Baldwin and Fishburne chained together and fleeing through the swamps from both the good guys and the bad guys. Later on, they reach the big city, and the film then borrows ideas from any police actioner that you could care to mention (Lethal Weapon, The Dead Pool, Tango and Cash, Striking Distance, et al). In fact, the second half of the film consists solely of fist fights and car chases and shootouts, all inspired by similar movies from the genre.

Fled never bores you, but it never particularly engages your brain. It is a quickly forgotten film, but it is also the perfect film to watch with your mates while you sink a six-pack of beer and a 16" pizza on a Friday night.