blseville If ya saw the movie when it came out it was better than most that year. And for whomever it was that has an issue with Mexico, they were headed to Vancouver. Yes, watching it for more than the 20th time since seeing it theaters.Whomever mentioned Gorden and Combs, spot on. Gordon had his way Combs would've been in far more of his flicks. Sorry for misspells.

bkoganbing In the future of the USA where apparently the right has triumphed among other things prisons are now in the hands of private corporations and abortion is illegal. But there are strict population controls and for those who have more than one child, that child in its infancy is turned over to the state for their use. What use they make of it too. The people who disobey that law, prison for a long time.So it is with Christopher Lambert and Laura Lochlyn, husband and wife who violate that edict. Lambert and a pregnant Lochlyn are arrested and sentenced to The Fortress which is an underground prison in the desert of the southwest USA that is operated by a private company with robot and semi-robot guards and a director who is one the successful super race that they've created with second children. The director is played by Kurtwood Smith of That Seventies Show and he's one chilling menace. But even a chilling menace raised as a super human has needs.So he decides he fancies Lochlyn and brings her into his quarters. Now imagine if you will Laurence Olivier who fancied Jean Simmons and brought her to his villa as Spartacus was dying on the cross. Kirk Douglas couldn't do much about his situation, but Lambert and his cell mates Clifton Collins, Jr., Tom Towles, Lincoln Kilpatrick who is a trustee and Jeffrey Combs do quite a lot about it. For that you have to see Fortress.I think one of the most popular themes in science fiction and even film in general is when some super beings are done in by us ordinary humans when we get roused enough to do something. It's the secret of the appeal of Fortress and I think science fiction fans and others will enjoy it.

Spikeopath 2017, a dystopian future, and US Army officer John Henry Brennick (Christopher Lambert) and his wife Karen S. Brennick (Loryn Locklin) are expecting a second child. Strict one-child policies forbid any couples having a second child, but the Brennick's first child died at birth so they attempt to get away with a second pregnancy. They are caught trying to cross the border and sent to a maximum security prison that is owned and run by the "MenTel Corporation" A place where dreams are not your own and all thoughts of escape are dealt with severely by futuristic methods unheard of in the civilised world.You got Connor MacLeod, Herbert West, Clarence J. Boddicker and one of the finest female bottoms in cinema, all crammed into one riotous, hokey and immeasurably fun movie. It probably wont come as much of a surprise to anyone to learn that this Christopher Lambert starrer is not going to have you scratching the cranial matter and pondering the future of mankind. But it does have some interesting ideas both in terms of its prison setting and in the technological advancements used. I mean hey, would you try to escape if you had an intestinal bomb set to go off outside the perimeters? {think The Running Man's neck braces but in your belly}. It can also be said of Fortress that it's not over ambitious, where director Stuart Gordon is aware of his restraints and keeps it simple but sparky, of which this is aided by Lambert buffing up and throwing punches left right and off kilter. Tho nothing much as an actor, Lambert none the less gives the likes of Sly and Arnie a run for their money here and looks every inch and sinew an action hero.Kurtwood Smith, Jeffrey Combs, Lincoln Kilpatrick, Clifton Collins Jr. and of course,Loryn Locklin's bottom, all add varying degrees of fun and frolics to the occasion. While the set design for the interiors is really rather snazzy. It's B movie berserker time folks, a dystopian world where Christopher Lambert can beat the crap out of blokes twice his size, where half humanoids have flame throwers for arms, and Kurtwood Smith is in charge of a prison. Great fun really, truly. 7/10

DigitalRevenantX7 After making an astounding breakthrough into the horror genre with the splatter classic RE-ANIMATOR, Stuart Gordon's career has consisted of a wild string of hits & misses. His biggest miss was Fortress, a futuristic prison breakout film that was also his biggest hit, proving so popular that a sequel came out half a decade later.When I said "his biggest miss", I meant that despite being a box-office hit, the film met with a mixed reaction from critics & genre fans alike. I personally don't like the film – Fortress is sci-fi at its most brainless. It is perhaps the worst film that Gordon has ever made (not to mention being so cheesy that it will win a French cheese competition).The USA has become a totalitarian regime, with a law passed that limits a woman to one child only. Marine Captain John Brennick & his wife, who is pregnant with her second child (the first died at birth), are caught at a checkpoint & sent to the Fortress, a secluded underground prison complex situated in the middle of a desert. There, prisoners are terrorised by pain-causing implants & computer-controlled devices that censor dreams. Brennick attempts to conduct a prison breakout, no mean feat considering that the prison is virtually escape-proof.Fortress is actually a wild concoction of every sci-fi cliché under the sun, which, although entertaining in the check-your-brain-at-the-door sense, proves to be amazingly silly. First, the film shows the US adopting a one-child policy, which is rather improbable given the fact that the US is a large country & is not packed to the brim like China, thereby making such a law pointless. The implants are another thing – they are poorly designed (they can be pulled out of the prisoner's body using magnetics) & there is nothing to stop them from being passed out as waste matter. The dream censor is ridiculous to say the least – if they can eliminate wet dreams, then why are prisoners going around raping their fellow inmates. The film also shoves in cyborgs (a staple of many self-respecting genre films during the 1990s), with a cyborg governor (who acts more human than machine) & whole cyborg SWAT teams, who prove to be nothing more than convenient cannon fodder for our hero, although they do kill half the escaping party.The acting is rather mixed. Christopher Lambert does his naughty-schoolboy impression (he is one of the most wooden actors around), while his fellow inmates are a lot more believable, with Jeffery Combs playing a jittery-nutbag to perfection & Kurtwood Smith trying to be a sympathetic villain, but narrowly missing out on that role by Tom Towles. Gordon throws in his usual darkly comedic splatter, which does contribute greatly to the film's watchability, although it is a style which belongs more to the horror genre than an action film like Fortress.