Truly Dreadful Film

Perfect cast and a good story

Absolutely brilliant

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Set "sometime in the future" the main character Frank (Rutger Hauer) gets sent into a new kind of prison. Everybody in the prison has a necklace, which is linked with another person's necklace. (Of course you don't know who this other person is.) If you get too far away from the person you're linked with both of your necklaces will explode. This is of course to prevent people from escaping. Compared to if the necklace was just linked to a certain spot inside the prison, the idea of linking the necklace to another person adds another dimension to it. You might be willing to risk your own life trying to escape, but do you really want to risk another person's life at the same time? Such a prison will not be set in the US in the present time of course. It would be highly controversial. That's why the believability of the plot relies on this being set in sometime the future, when views on moral have changed enough so that such a prison will become plausible. The problem here is that this "future" could very easily be mistaken for 1991, when the movie was made. This is a huge problem for me as I just don't believe that such a prison will exist in the US in the near future. I would have really wanted them to put more effort/resources into making it seem more futuristic. I guess this was a budgetary decision.Even if you don't care about the plot being plausible, this movie has little to offer compared to other semi-low-budget movies of the genre. The action sequences and acting efforts are pretty average, and the script follows the Hollywood formula quite well, making any plot twists obvious. I'm a bit disappointed because it actually seemed like a pretty cool idea for an early '90s action movie. Maybe I'm a little nice with the grade 4/10, but I didn't want to be too harsh when the basic idea is actually good. I might be interested in a remake with a bit higher budget so they can set it further into the future.I'd recommend this only for the die hard 1980s and early '90s action movie fans.

I watched this film on an intranet in China while wasting a few hours during one Beijing afternoon. Both Hauer and (Mimi) Rogers are competent actors and up until this film I hadn't seen a bad performance by either. All that changed with this film as neither actor is believable. I have no idea why two fine actors like Hauer and Rogers would get involved with a film this bad.This film proves to me that many of the people in the film industry have no idea how to actually make films that people want to watch (perhaps they should ask a few real people!). This film was too violent for no reason, had too much bad language but, strangely, had little or no sex and nudity! I must admit that I did not watch the whole film; after roughly an hour of this rubbish I neither cared about any of the characters or what happened to them! In fact, I'd almost given up on life itself! I would be interested if it made any money for the producers because it certainly didn't deserve to.The actual plot idea is quite good - a high security prison where inmates are kept from leaving by hi-tech collars around their necks. Unfortunately, not the writers, the director or the actors knew what to do with it to turn it into a good film. If you have an IQ higher than 50 or you are above 13, avoid this piece of trash like a prison sentence!

I just watched this movie again for the first time as an adult. I couldn't believe why I thought this movie was so good when I first saw it as a kid on HBO. The collars that are used are the exact same ones that were used in the opening sequence of "The Running Man" (same look, same design, same result, etc.,). I remember the black trustee in the movie from "Return of the Living Dead III". I guess I was using kid logic at the time; exploding heads=good. Rutger Hauer seems to be a veteran of this type of movie in recent years. He's kind of like that guy from the "American Ninja" movies or any movie from now defunct Cannon Pictures. If you want to see a truly good movie with Rutger Hauer in it, get some of his earlier Dutch films, Wolfgang Peterson's "Flesh and Blood" and, my personal favorite "Blind Fury.

This movie is about a prison, where the prisoners get a special collar. They are "linked" with another prisoner (but don't know which one). If they try to escape, and are too far away from each other, the collars explode. Rutger Hauer plays a guy who robs 25 million worth of diamonds, but gets double-crossed, and ends up in prison. The first part is your basic prison movie, later as Hauer escapes with his 'collar buddy' the movie turns into a fugitive movie where they are chased through the United States. Although I like the collar idea (which isn't original; it was used in The Running Man for instance), the movie is executed very poorly. The characters lack interest, and most are played very bad. The script is boring, and so are the one-liners. You've seen it all before, only better. Some might still enjoy this movie, but I seriously recommend to avoid it.