Fortress is set in the near future where America has become a Government controlled country, it is illegal for a couple to have more than one baby & because of this former Black Beret Captain John Henry Brennick (Christopher Lambert) & his wife Karen (Loryn Locklin) are trying to escape over the border to Mexico. They are caught & thrown into the Fortress, a tough state of the art underground prison in the middle of the desert. The prisoners are controlled by the sadistic warden Poe (Kurtwood Smith) & the super computer Zed who have the power of life & death over all the inmates. Feeling somewhat hard done by Brennick plans a daring escape...
This Australian American co-production was directed by Stuart Gordon & while it's not a total waste of time Fortress could have been a much better film. The script by Troy Neighbors, Steven Feinberg, David Venable & Terry Curtis Fox (it took four people to write this?) is nothing more than a pretty brainless prison escape film with a futuristic setting. There are holes in the plot that are difficult not to notice, for instance the mind machine that allows the warden to spy on the inmates dreams & if they are dreaming inappropriate thoughts they get punished. Well lets just look at that basic concept, for a start dreaming is a largely involuntary action & once your asleep you have little control over what you dream. Now whether you remember your dreams or not everyone does have dreams, so in that case every prisoner in the entire prison would be getting punished every night which just doesn't sound very likely & clearly doesn't happen. Then there's the idea that together with his super computer the Warden knows what everything thinks & feels yet he can't find out who started a fight & that a group of prisoners are planning a break out. Then there's the reason why the Warden wanted Karen to live with him or rather the lack of a reason since none is given. Despite a relatively poor & underdeveloped script at least it moves along at a decent pace, there are a few entertaining action set-pieces & it doesn't last for too long either but I had hoped for something a little better & slightly more substantial.
When he made Fortress director Gordon had some good genre efforts behind him like the excellent Re-Animator (1985), From Beyond (1986), Dolls (1987) & The Pit and the Pendulum (1991) so it's maybe a little disappointing to see him turn his hand to such a generic & surprisingly thoughtless sci-fi film. There's no social commentary here, there's no great message or warning for the future & I actually thought some of the practises used in the Fortress are good ideas to control scumbag villains which we should probably implement right now. There are one or two good gore scenes including an exploding stomach (cut on some versions), gory bullet hole wounds, someone with a huge hole in their stomach, half human half robotic cyborgs & exploding prison Wardens.
With a very reasonable sounding budget of about $12,000,000 I don't really see where the money went, the sets look alright, the action is competent but it doesn't do anything to distinguish itself from the hundreds of other futuristic action films out there that had budgets a tenth of Fortress. Set in America but shot in Queensland in Australia. The cast are strangely off colour too, Lambert doesn't make much impression as the hero, the always watchable Jeffrey Combs is wasted while Kurtwood Smith was probably cast because of his superb performance in Robocop (1987) but doesn't really seem that interested or intense as the villain.
Fortress was the most widely distributed film Gordon ever had & it's a shame it's a bit of a let down, it's not a complete disaster as it's an alright watch but it's fairly moronic stuff most of the time & doesn't feature any of the biting satire or commentary most great sci-fi have like Robocop or Starship Troopers (1997) to name but two.
This Australian American co-production was directed by Stuart Gordon & while it's not a total waste of time Fortress could have been a much better film. The script by Troy Neighbors, Steven Feinberg, David Venable & Terry Curtis Fox (it took four people to write this?) is nothing more than a pretty brainless prison escape film with a futuristic setting. There are holes in the plot that are difficult not to notice, for instance the mind machine that allows the warden to spy on the inmates dreams & if they are dreaming inappropriate thoughts they get punished. Well lets just look at that basic concept, for a start dreaming is a largely involuntary action & once your asleep you have little control over what you dream. Now whether you remember your dreams or not everyone does have dreams, so in that case every prisoner in the entire prison would be getting punished every night which just doesn't sound very likely & clearly doesn't happen. Then there's the idea that together with his super computer the Warden knows what everything thinks & feels yet he can't find out who started a fight & that a group of prisoners are planning a break out. Then there's the reason why the Warden wanted Karen to live with him or rather the lack of a reason since none is given. Despite a relatively poor & underdeveloped script at least it moves along at a decent pace, there are a few entertaining action set-pieces & it doesn't last for too long either but I had hoped for something a little better & slightly more substantial.
When he made Fortress director Gordon had some good genre efforts behind him like the excellent Re-Animator (1985), From Beyond (1986), Dolls (1987) & The Pit and the Pendulum (1991) so it's maybe a little disappointing to see him turn his hand to such a generic & surprisingly thoughtless sci-fi film. There's no social commentary here, there's no great message or warning for the future & I actually thought some of the practises used in the Fortress are good ideas to control scumbag villains which we should probably implement right now. There are one or two good gore scenes including an exploding stomach (cut on some versions), gory bullet hole wounds, someone with a huge hole in their stomach, half human half robotic cyborgs & exploding prison Wardens.
With a very reasonable sounding budget of about $12,000,000 I don't really see where the money went, the sets look alright, the action is competent but it doesn't do anything to distinguish itself from the hundreds of other futuristic action films out there that had budgets a tenth of Fortress. Set in America but shot in Queensland in Australia. The cast are strangely off colour too, Lambert doesn't make much impression as the hero, the always watchable Jeffrey Combs is wasted while Kurtwood Smith was probably cast because of his superb performance in Robocop (1987) but doesn't really seem that interested or intense as the villain.
Fortress was the most widely distributed film Gordon ever had & it's a shame it's a bit of a let down, it's not a complete disaster as it's an alright watch but it's fairly moronic stuff most of the time & doesn't feature any of the biting satire or commentary most great sci-fi have like Robocop or Starship Troopers (1997) to name but two.