Fled
Fled has probably one of the worst title names I have seen in a while. The preview is misleading in many ways. These are a couple of the problems with the movie Fled that I have spotted. There are more but as a quick-paced action film, this one hits right on the target. Using most of the cliches in the book, Fled entertains the viewer with humor and well choreographed fight and chase scenes. But the characters are a little weak and the plot is recycled.
The movie opens with an interrogation of a witness of the Cuban Mafia leader. After a cliched ending, the movie jumps to a canal full of criminals digging. We are introduced to Laurence Fishburne and Stephen Baldwin, who get into a fight and then are handcuffed together (as seen in the preview). After a fellow inmate gets a hold of a gun and shoots some cops and the bus, Laurence and Baldwin escape. They run through the woods towards Atlanta. However, they encounter several obstacles (a train, a river, a gunman... remember The Fugitive?) and overcome each one. The handcuffs exert a different twist to the chases and add some tension to the cliche.
However, they do not stay handcuffed for long. They kidnap a woman (Salma Hayek) and make her drive them to her house. She has a key to the handcuffs (convenient from an ex-husband cop) and they are unhooked. This actually takes away from the new twist and takes the movie into the typical cat-and-mouse movie. There are a couple of twists in the movie, but nothing unexpected. The movie is predictable but full of fun. The humor is witty and smart and the dialogue is good. I can't say much about the movie because I don't want to give anything away, even if you can guess it is coming.
The ending is actually a quick one and I was disappointed with it. I wanted a bigger ending because after all this action, a confusing ending comes up and the movie short-changes us. The sequence on the lift is okay, but nothing compared to some other high-altitude endings (If you want to see a wonderful high-altitude ending, see Cliffhanger).
The characters are the typical action-movie ones. Fishburne is good as the criminal in disguise. He takes his small, one-dimensional character and turns it into a three-dimensional character, though still small. Baldwin is not as good as his character in The Usual Suspects, but it is the normal character in this kind of movie. Will Patton is probably my favorite character. He is the smart cop who sees the error of the other cops. His reactions to the different obstacles are terrific, but he reminds me of Tommy Lee Jones character in The Fugitive.
And that's all Fled really is. A remake of The Fugitive. They even have a comment about that movie in this one. The movie is sort of a mix between The Fugitive, The Net, and Godfather. Fled is rated R. The violence and gore is pretty graphic, especially when people are shot in the neck. The language is harsh, but this is that kind of movie. There is a scene in a stripjoint where women dance topless. But for the overall entertainment value, Fled hits the mark. As for the smart cat-and-mouse movie, this movie recycles every cliche in the book.