“Fortress” is a sci-fi/action movie that works because unlike movies such as “The One” and “Demolition Man” it features a plausible future, the kind I saw in “Blade Runner”, “Metropolis” and the “Mad Max” films; this film isn’t as well as executed as them but it is good.

In the future, you can only have one child but after their baby dies at birth John Brennick (Christopher Lambert “Highlander”, “Mortal Kombat”) and his wife Karen (Loryn Locklin) have another but get caught at the Mexican border and are both sentenced to time in the ‘Fortress’, which is a privately-owned maximum-security prison that is 30 floors underneath a desert, but John has no intention of staying. A daring escape is afoot.

Christopher Lambert is tolerable as John Brennick. Lambert has never really ranked high in my eyes as a good action star as he lacks charisma but here the film is enjoyable enough for his performance to be overlooked. His wife is also played tolerably by Loryn Locklin. I like the voice of the computer system in this movie as it tries to capture the menacing feel of H.A.L. 9000 in the masterpiece that is “2001: A Space Odyssey”. I also really liked Jeffery Combs as the technology whiz D-Day.

“Fortress” has routine action scenes and some routine prison movie scenes that are enjoyable but nothing special but it is the intriguing sci-fi of a corporate run prison that really caught my attention. Sure the film is a little too dark to see what’s going on exactly at some points and some of it is a little bit too gory for my taste but the sets are great and some of the ideas are also good. It’s got nothing on “Blade Runner” or “Metropolis” but I think it’s not so far behind the “Mad Max” pictures so if you enjoyed them or any of these kinds of movies then see “Fortress”.