Fled — * * 1/2

Critic: Brandon Judell


In need of a fun B-movie version of “Lethal Weapon,” a film that doesn’t interfere with your popcorn crunching, then look no further. Producer Frank Mancuso, Jr. has pulled together an amiable cast and given them an inordinately inane script straining to be tongue-in-cheek by Preston A. Whitmore, II (the man responsible for directing and writing one of the worst films of the decade, the inordinately offensive blacks-in-Vietnam-war-disaster “The Walking Dead”). He’s then saddled the production with director Kevin Hooks, who seems out of his league when it comes to helming a pointless entertainment. Watching Three Stooges comedies (the ones without Curly) seems to have been his only preparation.

The heroes here are two convicts on a road gang. Dodge (Stephen Baldwin) has utilized his computer to steal $25 million, unknowingly from the Cuban Mafia. He’s not really a bad guy though, since he donated $20 million to charity.

Piper (Laurence Fishburne) is an ex-cop imprisoned falsely for stealing drugs. He’s also a nice guy.

While digging ditches, another convict makes homosexual advances on Dodge, calling him his “*****.” Upset by this salty banter, Dodge starts hitting him on the head with a shovel until Piper stops the fight. Consequently, the two leads are chained together and start punching each other, no doubt inspiring the guy who previously got hit on the head with the shovel to grab a guard’s gun and start shooting up everyone.

To escape the cascading bullets, Dodge and Piper escape into the nearby woods. To their “surprise,” not only are they being chased by the normal folks who chase prisoners on the lam, but by the Federal Marshals and the Cuban Mafia who both want a computer disk Dodge has hidden, a disk capable of convicting crime boss Mantajano (Michael Nader).

With a plot that has more gaping holes than Roseanne’s fishnet stockings, the charming Baldwin, the solid Fishburne and love interest Salma Hayek still make the proceedings palatable. The cast doesn’t take their ridiculous fisticuffs seriously and neither will you.

Additionally on the plus side, at least for this type of effort, there is a new type of Chinese torture, tampon bandages, numerous film trivia allusions, bullets through peepholes, lots of women as strippers (Oh, not again!!), and a fine soundtrack produced by wunderkind Dallas Austin.

DIRECTOR: Kevin Hooks
CAST: Laurence Fishburne, Stephen Baldwin, Salma Hayek, Will Patton, Robert John Burke, Robert Hooks, Victor Rivers, David Dukes, Ken Jenkins, Michael Nader, Brittney Powell, RuPaul
PRODUCER: Frank Mancuso, Jr. (MGM)
WRITER/EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Preston A. Whitmore, II
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Matthew F. Leonetti, A.S.C.
EDITORS: Richard Nord, Joseph Gutowski
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Charles Bennett
SPECIAL EFFECTS MAKEUP: Bill “Splat” Johnson
CATERING: Tomkats
PRODUCERS WISH TO THANK: United States Department of the Interior National Park Service, Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area—Atlanta, Georgia, Atlanta’s Mayor’s Office of Marketing and Communications, Georgia Dome, and 3D Animation Courtesy of Softimage Microsoft


GENRE: Action RATING: R TIME: 1:45