Nowhere to Run (1993)

(In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) As dull and featureless as most Jean-Claude Van Damme movies of the early-1990s, Nowhere to Run doesn’t have much to offer to those who aren’t already fans of the actor. Here we have van Damme as an escaped ex-convict (but not the bad kind of ex-convict, obviously) taking up the protection of a widow and her two children against unscrupulous real-estate developers in a rural setting. To be fair, Robert Harmon’s direction does have a few moments, especially in the action sequences. Still, that’s not much—There’s more fun in chuckling at Belgian van Damme pretending to be from Québec, or seeing an unusually cute Rosanna Arquette go through the motions of a rote role. There really isn’t much to gnaw on in the movie, even for action-movie fans—it’s fairly dull stuff, with few surprises in execution. Van Damme was averaging nearly a movie and a half per year in the early 1990s (not an easy feat considering the rigours of an action role), and Nowhere to Run has the bad luck of being sandwiched between the far-better Universal Soldier and Hard Target. In other words, don’t worry too much if you forgot about it—you’re liable to forget about it moments after watching it again.