FORTRESS (1992)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Though I won't say writer-director Stuart Gordon never made a dull film, he oversaw enough high-energy movies that I've come to expect at the very least a decent thrill-ride.

FORTRESS is a prison movie that happens to be set in the near future of 2017, when the government has become so oppressive as to restrict all couples to bearing just one child. An ex-military married couple, John Brennick (Christopher Lambert) and Karen (Loryn Locklin), lost a previous child, but they want another chance. Thus Karen becomes pregnant a second time, and the two of them attempt to cross into Canada to escape the harsh U.S. law. Both of them are caught and sentenced to long sentences in a maximum security prison "fortress." Like many such future-prisons, they're imagined as being run by private corporations with no government oversight, and the Fortress is managed by an inevitably corrupt company known as Men-Tel. Despite the company's name, its employees, from the guards to Warden  Poe (Kurtwood Smith), control the prisoners not through their minds but through their stomachs. Devices called "intestinators" are implanted in the prisoner's intestinal tracts, and when computerized monitors, under the command of a central computer called "Zed," detect bad behavior, the prisoners experience wrenching stomach pains.

Brennick and Karen are inevitably separated into different sections of the prison, so for most of the film the audience follows Brennick as he, "the new fish," makes friends and enemies among the populace. His fighting skill and fierce morality soon make his a charismatic figure to the other prisoners, thus bringing upon him the wrath of Poe. However, Poe's interest turns from Brennick to his wife, as he invites her to become his "companion." Karen accepts to save Brennick's life. Thn she learns that when her child is born, it will be appropriated by Men-Tel and turned into one of a set of experimental cyborg soldiers. Thus Karen conspires with her husband and his friends to pull off a Great Escape.

The danger to the couple and their baby naturally informs the main conflict, and the revelation that the quirky Poe is himself a company cyborg further stokes the heroes' need to escape. There are a number of solid action-scenes in FORTRESS, though Gordon has done better in his high-octane career. Lambert once more executes his standard heroic persona of a terse, driven man of action.