This review is of the TV-14 version of the film. Al thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative
It’s time for a film with a pretty direct title. Nowhere Left to Run just sounds like a fun film and it definitely doesn’t hold back on having a lot of action the whole time. The characters can be a bit weak but in general it had good attitude and fights so this works out for me. It may not be ambitious but makes for a good watch on a rainy afternoon. Just expect the characters to be making annoying decisions the whole time.
The film starts off with a prison bus being attacked by a group of thugs. The prisoners are all freed so they fight over the car. This results in a bunch of deaths but before dying, Billy says he is glad to have finally gotten Sam out. It’s implied that Sam shouldn’t have been in prison and now the guy has to decide what to do with his life. He hangs out on a large property for now when he notices some bruisers trying to intimidate the local owner. Her name is Clydie and she is refusing to sell her property to a real estate mogul who is trying to demolish all of the houses in the area. There are only two houses left standing but this guy is willing to use illegal methods to get the homeowners out. What can Clydie do?
Okay so lets get to the biggest problem of the film right out of the gate. Clydie seems completely unable to read context clues. The villain in this film is not exactly subtle either. He hires some brutes to beat her and the kids up in one of the first scenes and they only do not succeed because Sam shows up to beat them. Clydie is still rather apprehensive for a while and that’s fine because she doesn’t know Sam yet. She should be prepping her shotgun that is shown off throughout the film so that she is ready to fight off any more invaders.
Instead she just lives life as normal. The villains show up again later on and she just says to their face that she will never sell…and they can’t make her sell. Very brave and all but she sees how they torch up the other family’s house so that should be ringing some alarm bells. Instead she decides to stay the course and even tells Sam to go away because he’s a criminal. Obviously the villains show up anyway and claim the victory but the whole thing felt very avoidable.
Lets put it this way, Clydie has two real options here. The first one is to accept the bribe for the house and leave. The other is to grab her gun and start taking people out. Those are her only two options because in this small town there are no cops to help her out. They’re already on the payroll and the villains have free reign to do whatever they want. Her character just feels completely unrealistic the whole time. I think the film was trying to show that she’s just really emotional after going on the rebound with Sam but that’s a terrible excuse on the whole.
I would even say that Sam’s plot twist at the time shouldn’t be coming as a big shock to her. She knew that he was hiding things when they first met and the guy was a top tier fighter. What did she think the truth of his backstory was going to be? If she’s also some kind of a big pacifist, then that was never going to be a good deal for her. She shouldn’t have gotten involved with him then. Her kids can be a bit annoying but they’re too young to be doing much about anything. I can’t blame them too hard as a result of that.
Now for Sam, he’s a reasonably solid character. He shows up to beat up the bad guys and eventually leaves when he isn’t wanted there anymore. Sam is generally going into situations where he is outnumbered or on the losing side but he still fights all the way. I think he should have fought back against Lonnie during one scene where he is trying to be the bigger man though. I never agree with just standing there and taking a beating. It’s virtually never the right answer to a situation.
As far as the romance goes, Sam should not have been moving fast. He doesn’t technically know Clydie pretty much at all and a romance that starts off in such a rushed way is not going to be all that strong. There simply isn’t time for it to have been built up almost at all. The situation gets real rocky and he’s shocked at how she turns on him but he shouldn’t be. Again, Sam doesn’t even know her by this point. He should have stuck to being a nice guy who helps out and then left from that point.
You have to keep in mind that she was still with Lonnie by this point. She didn’t know that he was a corrupt cop and was still immediately cheating on him for the new guy on the block. Lonnie exposed himself as being a terrible character right away so it’s not like I felt too bad for him but it does underscore how weak the romance was here. It’s the kind of romance that is here to pad out the time without really adding anything to the film. I’d rather we have gotten more scenes of the villains making plans or something.
The main villain’s a fairly clever old guy. He has been in the game for a long time and the film lets us know on multiple occasions that this isn’t his first rodeo. He has been taking over land for a long time and that’s why he only hires the best to work for him. He suspects early on that Lonnie won’t be tough enough and so that’s why he gets the magician. The magician is pretty good and gives Sam a solid fight. I enjoyed their quick back and forths as the two would subtlety threaten each other. Well, okay it was never all that subtle at all but the dialogue was still strong.
This was when the film was at its best. So we could have used some extra time to explain why the last remaining townsfolk were so confident that corporate wouldn’t burn their house down and beat them up. Everyone just looked so naïve that it was crazy. It also makes one scene look weird as one guy is yelling about how he will stay in his house forever and they can’t make him leave. Clydie naturally agrees and tells him that she is taking the same approach. Then the guy randomly contradicts himself just to disagree with her and then storms off. Like he actually knows that everything he was saying was hot air and it took someone else saying the same thing for him to realize it?
It can easily come across as victim blaming in these films but I just don’t get why you would not have taken the time to come up with some kind of a plan here. Otherwise you’re just a complete sitting duck which is a dumb position to find yourself in. So this works as a fast paced action blockbuster where Sam is the town’s only hope but in large part it’s because the villagers really aren’t fighting back at all.
I did appreciate that we had some good one liners in here as well. The film was not afraid to throw a little humor in from time to time and I always like one liners when finishing off an opponent. That’s just a good idea in general and this film was effective at it. The movie’s also not quite as violent as you might expect. It tends to focus more on the choreography than on focusing on each kill. There absolutely is blood and such but nothing all that crazy.
Overall, Nowhere to Run is a good film that is relying a lot on big action scenes. Fortunately that is often enough to win me over. At one point we get a long motorcycle chase scene and I feel like that was added in to live up to the title. Otherwise it’s a bit random and I gotta say that Sam acts in the most suspicious way possible. He could have kept eating his steak and at least tried to engage in small talk. It may have been futile but instead he gave all of the most suspicious answers possible which didn’t really help his case. The main thing to remember is if you’re up against corrupt corporate officials, you’re probably going to need to go on the offensive sooner than later. I’d recommend this film if you’re looking for a quick action flick.
Overall 7/10
