Andy's Archive: Fortress (1993)

Credit: Dimension Films

Usually you can't go wrong with a bleak, futuristic movie. They're either knee-deep in science fiction cliches or chock full of action; sometimes both. John Carpenter's Escape From New York is a good example of a bleak future, where the country has too many criminals, so they seal them off within New York City as a city of the damned. We see New York through the hero's perspective as he is on a rescue mission, with criminals, freaks, and even a cab driver popping up along the way. As Fortress began and I got an idea of what the movie might be, I thought it could turn out to be like Escape From New York, only from the criminals' perspective instead.

 

Fortress actually goes a bit beyond my initial impression and it could possibly be Christopher Lambert's best performance. Lambert is John Brennick, who is sentenced to a underground prison for thirty years after he and his wife conceive an illegal second child. Brennick meets a wild assortment of criminals inside of the Fortress and I enjoyed the camaraderie between him and his cellmates. It even seems like Brennick has a friendship with one cellmate much like that of Andy and Red in The Shawshank Redemption. An interesting feature of this prison is that each prisoner is injected with a device into his (or her) stomach that causes them to be punished called an “Intestinator.” A high tech computer system monitors not just their actions, but their thoughts too, and if a person gets out of line they’ll receive a bad case of indigestion.

 

The man who watches over each prisoner and monitors the computer system has to be a lonely person. Its not known how long he’s been in his current position as the Warden, but I’m sure he’s deprived of many luxuries and necessities of being a human, which is why he gets his kicks from watching prisoners’ sex dreams. It raises the stakes when not only is Brennick’s wife on another level inside of the Fortress, she’s also the object of affection for the lonely Warden.

 

Fortress rises above being just another prison escape movie as it mixes sci fi concepts in a creative way. While those “Intestinators” were unique in their own way, plenty of movies have done the over-populated gimmick too, and the Alien and Resident Evil movies franchises feature evil corporations, Fortress still feels surprisingly fresh. The evil company in this movie known as the MenTel Corporation (is it Mental? heh) doesn't have a well defined mission for its prisoners, except to build new levels, I still found myself rooting for a happy ending with Brennick and his wife.