imdb-15748
Sci-Fi fans love to think they are so smart sometimes. Everyone keeps bashing this movie for the scene where the main character survives in space without a spacesuit. To be honest, I have not seen the movie, so I do not know how long he spends in space, however I registered on IMDb just to point out that it may actually be possible to survive in the vacuum of space for a short time. See The Straight Dope for more details on that: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_147.html. Moreover, having a character survive a short time in space without a suit is not an unusual plot device. It was done in 2001: A Space Odyssey and also Event Horizon, and probably others. The concept is certainly not any more outrageous than diving through a plate glass window without suffering massive lacerations and not any more outrageous than a huge number of other physics-ignoring-action that Hollywood puts into movies every single day.
Markbruinekreeft
I think most people who regularly watch movies will be somewhat familiar with the (unofficial) genre of the "good bad film"; movies so bad, it makes them actually quite entertaining to watch for reasons entirely different from the intentions of the people who made them. I find it somewhat hard to determine though, whether or not I can consider "Fortress II" to be such a movie.Sure, all the ingredients for an unintentionally funny film are there: ludicrous script, bad acting, lousy effects, laughable dialogue and a gross neglect of even the most basic laws of physics (where did this space station's gravity come from, again?). Fortress II goes flat on its face at every turn which, in theory, should make it a blast. But for some reason I felt somewhat embarrassed rather than really amused while watching it.I still can't really tell for sure why I didn't like this film, even as a parody of itself. Maybe the actors just seemed a little too desperate as they struggled to "look cool" despite the meager story and amateurish dialogue, which actually made me feel a little bit sorry for them. Or perhaps it was because it was a bad film, but perhaps just not blatantly bad enough to be really, really funny. Or perhaps the problem was just simply the fact that it was broadcast on a Wednesday night in the middle of a working week, so my mind was still mostly on work-related issues. But whatever the reason, I didn't really enjoy this film in any way. I didn't think it was all that funny and I just can't possibly make myself think of it as a serious sci-fi/action flick either. All in all, I could advise you to perhaps take a look at this film when the chance happens to present itself (read: some network uses it as schedule filler while there's nothing else on). Maybe you'll be better able than I was, to appreciate the undeniable potential for unintentional comedy in this scholarly example of how not to make a movie. But under no circumstance waste your time and/or money purposely looking for it, buying it, renting it or even downloading it. Not even if you did like the first "Fortress". It's just not worth your trouble, not as a worthy sequel to the actually quite bearable first "Fortress" and not even as a "Plan 9 from Outer Space"-like dud.
TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews
Christopher Lambert; the king of newer B-movies. The guy has been in every(I think) Highlander movie so far, despite the fact that only the first was particularly popular. He's done so many B-movies that one has to wonder if he is aware that the films are bad and doesn't care, or if he really doesn't realize their quality(or, rather, lack thereof). Here, he returns in a sequel to the fairly low-budget B-movie action-science fiction flick, Fortress. In the first one, the prison was huge, and underneath the ground. Here, it's... well, it's still huge, but this time, it's in outer space. I guess the writer thought, hey, the first time, it was underneath the ground... the only place that could be worse than that would be outer space. I hope he's right... I surely do, because if he is, maybe we won't see anymore half-cooked action-sci-fi flicks like this. Lambert portrays the exact same character, which I suppose is good, as he was a decent character in the first. A few somewhat big names also join the cast, most noticeably Pam Grier. The cast of characters from the first are pretty much remade(apart from Lambert himself), meaning that the new cast pretty much just fills the shoes of the characters from the first(anyone who knows how the first ended knows why). Unfortunately, that means that the film seems more like an overblown remake with the same guy portraying the lead, rather than a sequel. The hacker from the first(who was a neurotic, nervous guy, beautifully portrayed by great horror-talent, Jeffrey Combs) is replaced by an annoying black-guy stereotype. The female lead is replaced by a girl from the resistance(which Lambert's character is said to be a member of as well... odd... I don't remember that from the first... does that mean he joined the resistance after he got a kid? Who'd do that?), instead of his wife as it was in the first... apparently mainly because the scriptwriter couldn't find a good way to capture both Lambert and the wife-character, without capturing the kid. The Men-Tel prison commander(who was played by the cool bad-guy actor, Kurtwood Smith, from RoboCop fame) is now an annoying wimp with a ridiculous British accent that really gets on your nerves(as opposed to the cool Smith, who was a menacing and threatening presence). The plot is a rehash of the first. The pacing isn't particularly good. The very scenes in the movie seems to be(for the most part) remakes of the scenes of the original(talk about lack of originality...) and the action is mostly just rehashes of the first, just made a little less exciting(remember those way-cool machine guns with three barrels in the first? They're replaced with dull futuristic-looking stick-stun-guns). The special effects are decent at best. The script is a weak rehash of the first, with a few added sub-plots, none of which being particularly good... most of them are just there to keep the film going, or put it an action scene, in order to distract the audience from the poor writing. The dialog is pretty bad, with one or two exceptions. All in all, the film is just a tame rehash of everything the first was(which isn't even a lot). Somebody took the first film, said, "hey, this is popular... but it's not very good... how about if we try to do something of even lesser quality and see if people will like it?" Probably writer/producer/actor John Flock, who, going by the plot and the writing of this film, really is as dumb as he looks. I recommend this only to huge fans of the first Fortress, Lambert or B-movies. Everyone else; don't bother. There's a million better ways to spend 90 minutes, and there's at least as many reasons not to see this film. 5/10
