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"Not a train," the title is jailhouse slang for escape, "it doesn't stop here." The pressure-cooker technique is foregrounded right off the bat—the trap the Long Island jock (Brad Davis) sets for himself in Turkey is a cold-sweat montage set to the thumping of Giorgio Moroder's synth heartbeat, the Eighties aesthetic is seen already taking form. "Turks love to catch any foreigner," the dunderheaded Yank with two kilos of hashish makes for a perfect specimen to be defiled in the medieval penitentiary. Punishment and torture are the norm, the harsher the better, the warden (Paul L. Smith) is a twitchy boulder of flesh who enjoys his work. (He at one point brings his well-fed offspring to witness his favorite maneuver, clubbing prisoners across the soles of their feet.) The cellmates are a skeletal Brit (John Hurt) floating on his own heroin cloud and a fellow American (Randy Quaid) with tunneling dreams. "This is Shagmahr prison, not Stalag 17." I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Le Trou, Titicut Follies and Papillon inform the "ol' Istanbul blues" of Oliver Stone's pain-junkie script, served by Alan Parker's camera with promiscuous gloating. From strangulated kitties to dashed breakout hopes to triumphant freeze-frames, no manipulative stone is left unturned. Advances from the hunky Swede (Norbert Weisser) are declined with soft-focus primness, the ejaculatory climax is reserved for the blood-spattered revenge on the avaricious snitch (Paolo Bonacelli). The visiting girlfriend (Irene Miracle) is a feminine mirage promptly befouled, existential philosophies in the depths are given to a plummy pederast (Peter Jeffrey) babbling about defective machines. "Prison... monastery... cloister... cave." The approach is magnified by Parker in Mississippi Burning and by Stone in Born on the Fourth of July, together not worth a minute of Güney's riposte, The Wall. Cinematography by Michael Seresin. With Bo Hopkins, Mike Kellin, Franco Diogene, Michael Ensign, and Gigi Ballista.
--- Fernando F. Croce |