User Reviews

"No Way Back" sticks FBI agent Crowe in the middle of a crude conglomeration of assorted Mafia weirdos, FBI agents, cops, Yakuza, and an airline flight attendant in its attempt to mix action with attitude and tongue-in-cheek humor. The result is a messy plot which accomplishes little save lurching from one mediocre action scene to the next. An okay no brainer for insomniacs.

After watching this film I could see the great actor that Russell Crowe has become. The film although lacking a little in the story department, just needed a few added scenes, the actors were great. The comic relief was great. This film received an okay star rating from me and has good reason. You should take a look especially if you are a fan of the man now.

An undercover operation goes wrong for FBI Agent Zack Grant (Russell Crowe) when new agent Seiko (Kelly Hu) goes vigilante and kills everybody including herself. Eight people are dead and Grant is blamed. He wants to find the truth. It turns out that Seiko had been calling Yakuza member Yuji Kobayashi and Grant goes to investigate. Gangster Frank Serlano (Michael Lerner) blames Grant for his son's death in that operation, and kidnaps Grant's son. Flight attendant Mary (Helen Slater) comes in after 30 minutes and has a funny turn.

This movie tries so hard to be a stylish action thriller. Writer/director Frank A. Cappello misses the mark and strays into cheesy territories. The over the top acting, the bad style, and the splashy action does nothing but strip the movie of any realism. The only good thing is the funny turn that Helen Slater takes in this movie. It's a welcome relief from all the ridiculous seriousness.

Judging by previous comments, my expectations for this film were zero. However, I was quite entertained by it. Yes, it has it's rough spots, and 'Oh, come ON' spots, but lots of the dialogue was funny, and the violence was minimal once you got past the set-up. Pretty standard plot, but Russell Crowe is always good, and Helen Slater as the air-line attendant was great. Made me laugh, made my son laugh. Not worth a $9 movie ticket, but well worth a video rental and a bowl of popcorn.

What starts off as a fairly promising film completely collapses after the first 20 to 30 minutes. Kelly Hu plays rookie FBI agent "Seiku Kobayshi" who volunteers to go undercover as a call-girl in order to plant a listening device into the bathroom of a dangerous white supremacist organization. Once inside the organization she guns down the leader, "Victor Serlano" (played by Ian Zierling) and several of his men. When FBI agent "Zack Grant" (played by Russell Crowe) arrives on the scene, Seiku jumps out of the high-rise to her death. During the follow-up investigation it is learned that Seiku had very recently contacted an important leader of the Yakuza named "Yuji" (Etsushi Toyokawa). This results in speculation that she was somehow coerced by Yuji to kill Victor, so FBI agent Zack Grant is sent to Japan to investigate. A gun-battle then ensues and Zack arrests Yuji in order to take him back to the United States. Meanwhile, Frank Serlano (Michael Lerner), the father of the white supremacist leader, kidnaps Zack's son "Eric" (Andrew J. Ferchland) in order to pressure Zack to bring Yuji to him. On the way back "Mary" (Helen Slater) is introduced into the film as one of the flight attendants who becomes inadvertently involved in the scenario. So far so good. Unfortunately, it is at this point where the film begins to deteriorate as the audience is treated to one far-fetched incident after another. While Helen Slater played her part adequately, the same can't be said for Russell Crowe as this wasn't one of his better performances. But the main responsibility for this fiasco belongs on the shoulder of the director/writer, Frank A. Cappello. With the cast that he had he should have been able to produce a much better film. Instead he chose stunts and gimmicks over good acting and a reasonable plot. What a shame.

I find it hard to believe that I could dislike any film starring Russell Crowe, but this one is a complete waste of his talent -- and my time. I'd like to say that his acting job was a "rose among the thorns" but I don't think that even he was convincing. He was a foul-tongued protagonist [with an ugly hair-style that even his character couldn't have thought was becoming] who over-reacted to everything in this tortured and unbelievable plot. In retrospect, I wonder why I even gave it a "3".

My suspicions that the 1990s were the worst decade for film are confirmed with this absolutely atrocious travelogue-cum-thriller which wastes the talents of rising star Russell Crowe in an painfully awful piece of predictable filmmaking. Writer/director Frank A. Cappello is the guy responsible for this monstrosity and I don't know what he was thinking, because as a coherent film it's awful.

The movie opens with future starlet Kelly Hu dispatching a room of bland bad guys before Crowe, playing a wisecracking cop, gets involved. His job takes him to Japan and back again while he has to contend with a kidnapping (that doesn't seem to phase him too much) and gets saddled with a stewardess (Helen Slater) who might well be the worst supporting female role ever put in a film. It's not just that Slater is terrible (although she is), but her character is even more irritating than Erika Eleniak's in UNDER SIEGE, and that's saying something.

Despite the relative shortness of the running time, the plot meanders along with one cringe-inducing gag after another. The action sequences, despite reoccurring at regular intervals, are terribly handled and watch out for the excruciating bit of FX work when a helicopter crashes. The film increasingly tries your patience as it progresses so that by the end I was half sleep, barely aware of the credits rolling; never a good sign!

I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. It's a well-produced, good-looking action/thriller flick with sharp, witty dialogue and great performances from the lead actors. Russell Crowe is charismatic and very watchable. I especially liked the morally ambiguous tone - Crowe's character isn't a clean-cut good guy. Well worth a look.

This movie is a technical Mess. The opening scene shows the villain holding a modern fragmentation grenade and two minutes later it turns into a WWII vintage "Pineapple". They must have shot these two scenes months apart and obviously they lost the original prop. The doctor doing the autopsy pulls a "slug" from the body and states, "Another shell is found in the lower spine". That would be the first time a bullet "casing" ever caused a mortal wound. How did they use for a technical consultant on this movie, some 22 year old Vassar graduate?

I had a negative bias towards this movie because of the description that I had read about it, but soon after it started I was impressed by the camera work and technical quality (including the special effects) of this movie. The fighting scenes were sometimes unrealistic, though the gun with two bullets actually had only two bullets in it. In general, I was positively impressed, though the end left a lot to be desired. The flight attendant caught in all the fighting acted quite well, even though her role was quite irritating at times.

No great shakes, just a 90 minute time killer.

Has enough action to make you forget about the canyon-sized plot holes, and Crowe is convincing as always. He plays an FBI guy who botched up an assignment and is trying to make amends to the agency. He is also a widower and has a seven year old son.

Helen Slater is annoying in the thankless role of comic relief.

The themes of racism reminded me of 'Romper Stomper' which Crowe starred in. The beginning of the movie looks like its directly from that excellent movie shot before this.

As a fan I had to see it for Russell. If it were Bruce Willis I would have never bothered. Its only ninety minutes so no one really can get offended.

I'm always on the hunt for overlooked 80's and 90's action thrillers and cop movies and i found No Way Back. I like Russell Crowe, he looks serious on the DVD cover wearing a suit pointing a gun and it's rated "18" so i'm thinking it's going to be a gritty and violent detective thriller. I'm getting Year of the Dragon vibes (the cool 80's Mickey Rourke cop movie). It isn't like that at all though. It's a kind of goofy buddy action movie where the action isn't very good but the characters are likeable and i laughed out loud a few times. Helen Slater who played Super Girl in the 80's is in it and she's very funny and charming and you can tell that Russell Crowe was about to be a big star. The whole movie is just kind of lame though, i kept waiting for something cool to happen but it never did.

I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again but it wasn't the worst thing ever, just an average 90's B-movie.

FBI agent Zack Grant sends a female officer (Seiko) in to the apartment of a mafia boss's son posing as a whore in order to drop a bugging device. However when the agent kills the group and then kills herself Grant finds evidence to suggest that she was working for Yakuza lord Yuji. Grant travels to arrest him but on returning to America finds that the mob have kidnapped his son in exchange for Yuji. However with Yuji claiming innocence and the FBI, police, Yakuza and the mob all after him, can Grant make it to the trade?

I watched this film on the strength of Crowe being in the lead – even though I knew that it was made before he `made it' so the quality may not be that great. The plot is a mix of bad guys and good guys all trying to get Grant and Yuji, with Grant just trying to save his son. It isn't a very innovative idea but it is good enough for a video thriller such as this. The set pieces are all reasonably exciting and most are directed with style and energy that belies the standard of the plotting.

While it may not be brilliant it is certainly a lot better than most of the video thrillers you'll find on a lonely Saturday night. A big part of this is due to Crowe being in the lead. Years before Gladiator he'd already had some powerful Australian roles and was a commanding lead actor. Here he rises above the material and makes it better – during the action scenes etc he is faultless, it is only his interactions with women and children where he comes across as wanting. Tokokawa's Yuji is a good character – never morally clear until the end and charming and deadly with it. Slater is a bum note but happily she doesn't spoil things too much. Her bubbly comedy sidekick is irritating and the film could have easily done without this part of the video thriller formula.

Overall I enjoyed this film much more than I suspected I would. Without Crowe this film still has higher values that I thought it would and is polished and entertaining despite a formulaic plot. With Crowe in the lead the film is raised a notch and he is commanding in an ordinary role that many would have failed to liven up.

In 1995 this would have been categorized as "straight to video." It's being promoted today because it's an "early" Russell Crowe movie. The movie succeeds in stranding Russell, and two fine Japanese actors, in a film so painfully inept, that there is no way back.

It's strange yet funny in an odd sort of way when you see a film from years and years ago staring people you know of now as they've had such good careers since. Russell Crowe wasn't really an absolute nobody when No Way Back was made; Romper Stomper and The Quick and the Dead were pretty good films that were made in an established and impressive way but you really have to wonder what Crowe was thinking when he starred in this.

The cop/buddy formula was probably rather alluring given the fact it was 1995 and they'd enjoyed reasonable success before then what with Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop but No Way Back plays out more like a forced, ugly looking Steven Segal film if anything. The film is nothing original nor is it anything special – that 'borrowed' feeling is only further emphasised when an exchange deal involving Zach Grant (Crowe) and a Japanese guy looks like it's going to go wrong so Grant makes an attempt to play cards with some gangsters and gives himself an excuse to put his hands under the table whilst his accomplice gets into a spot of bother. The whole thing is completely lifted from Carlito's Way (1993) when Carlito sets up a pool trick shot in order to get the jump on the majority of the baddies.

Amongst feeling generic and looking rather grainy, No Way Back just feels like it's a film that wants to have fun; it's almost saying 'don't take me seriously for the best part, enjoy me' since a series of silly events and silly characters fill up the screen. One accomplice comes in the form of an air stewardess who is given no introduction as a character, has no back-story or anything yet suddenly finds herself caught up in the plot and is suddenly acting as a central character – if Grant wasn't so unhinged, she'd almost certainly be the love interest. The stewardess, Mary, is played by a woman who was Supergirl in a failed film that was supposed to launch her career: she has an annoying whiney voice that spoils the action scenes, she stays so very one dimensional throughout, it's ridiculous and there is just no development what-so-ever: she's pointless to the film.

Along with this, the fact I was laughing following Grant and co's capture following a desert chase is surely the sign of bad film-making. Someone who I think was attached to a corrupt law enforcement agency has a wooden gun that he places in a box that comically sticks out from off screen before being retracted as we see the corrupt guy pull out a German Luger pistol – hilarious. This twinned with the delivery of his lines really was bad.

Where No Way Back does scrape some credibility is that Crowe's acting isn't bad – a man who has had his son kidnapped and has suffered past tragedy, only emphasising why getting his son back is so important as it's all he has. Also, the way a police trooper character is so quickly introduced and then eliminated though a surprise gunshot towards the end was impressive but with a weak climax and an odd, sympathetic final shot doesn't really tell the whole story. Where did Mary go? What about the Japanese person he was escorting? Do they think going to a baseball game will erase all the problems? Why is Grant still living in the same, obviously unsafe place he was before? No Way Back does more things wrong than it does right but I think it's enjoyable in a guilty, brainless sort of way as it balances action and plot progression as well as dealing with sensitive issues such as loss of loved ones be it the big bosses son, Grant's son as he's kidnapped or Grant's past catastrophe.

Crime drama / Comedy lots of humorous moments. Crow does a good job both serious & funny.

I would say it has a good deal of light hearted humor.

No spoilers

Wife & I enjoyed this - worth a watch

Watching this movie was very boring to me because it's very predictable. There is always one cop, one lady and few bad guys that are looking more funny too me, then dangerous (Michael Lerner and Kristopher Logan). And of course we all know that ending will be happy. It is obvious that we are watching solid B-film with Russell Crowe. Even Crowe had to pass through this kind of action movie so one day he could become an established actor. It is nice to see the beginning of the career for Crowe but the whole movie doesn't presents anything new. Only Russell Crowe's performance is on top, cause he looks like ordinary cop, he's funny and he showed us all that one day he will be star. But path to the stars is always rough.

'No Way Back' reminded me of were the original 'Die Hard' and 'Speed'. A cop who's job gets increasingly personal. A put-upon hero who gets his mettle tested to the limit and loved ones are in harms way. A white-knuckle ride all the way with all kinds of action, twists and turns in the plot. Before I saw it I asked around and read fan reviews. The predominating message was that you could skip it because a particular character is annoying and whiny. I wouldn't allow that to stop you - especially if you are a Crowe fan. In addition to being an action film, it's got a sense of humor and a sense of humanity. There are some wonderful performances by two Japanese actors in the film, and one shocking one by anyone who's seen 'Beverly Hills 90210'.

Well, this is a surprisingly short film from the bid-90s, when women still had big hair (our stewardess, uh, air hostess, uh, hmmm no gender?). She's a character--true-to-character amateur psychologist meets in-trouble FBI agent with Yakuza prisoner...from beginning to end, you really have no idea what's going on in this film, which has a miraculous ending. You don't see Mary at the end. But, she saved widower Zeck's son's life. Zack comments to that Eric is "spending too much time with that Mary." which completes that circle...it could be considered a sarcastic farce about family relationships, with a little too much blood. That makes it entertaining enough--and kept my attention, which isn't that easy.

Long before Russell Crowe is the Gladiator, the unhinged road-rager, or the charming Captain Jack, he plays a sardonic FBI agent--and this isn't a waste of 90 minutes time by far, if you can remember 1995 )))

This film's title, while descriptive of its story, is also a subtle taunt to the viewer for having wasted their time. "No Way Back" is stale, brainless, and just not that fun.

This subpar action thriller is a load of cliches, but they're not presented in a new or stylish way at all. The tough cop, the reluctant female sidekick, the kidnapped child, etc. None of it is very interesting. There's not a ton of action, either, which is disappointing.

The plot follows Russell Crowe as a tough FBI agent who is disgraced after an outsider he brought in for an operation botches the entire thing. He finds the brother of the woman who ruined it, and arrests them, but a relative of a man killed in the operation kidnaps Crowe's son, so Crowe is forced to turn in his suspect to the gangster in return for his son's life.

Russell Crowe is the best thing about this movie. Everything else kind of falls flat. Crowe is charismatic, and really sells his desperation and determination, and he somewhat elevates a bland story. The story is just old hat and doesn't really make its plot interesting. It even changes tones and genres several times. In the beginning it's a gritty crime story, in the end of the first act it turns into a "Die Hard"-esque action movie, and then into a buddy road movie. None of the changes were very well done either. I can enjoy a good tonal shift or narrative change, but only if it's interesting, and flows well with the story. Crowe's character was also the only interesting character. All the others were just kind of meh. The girl in particular, had literally no reason to be in the story.

The action is pretty bland too. There's not a ton, and in one of the shootouts, it's not edited or shot that well, and a helicopter explodes, causing an explosion that wouldn't look out of place in a TV movie. The action just feels muted, and isn't very visceral or hard-hitting, or even entertaining. Even the climax is bland, and Crowe doesn't even do anything during it. Don't expect an action-packed thriller at all.

It's just not a great film. There are "good" bad movies, which are entertaining in their badness/bizarre nature, and there are just plain bad movies. This film isn't in either category. It's not horrible, and you could do a lot worse, but it's not great. It's a boring kind of bad, where you feel like it's ok, but there are so many better options. It's just a middling action film, that doesn't set itself apart at all, and is in all sense of the term, a "time-waster".

Overall, unless you're a die-hard Russell Crowe fan, or have seriously exhausted your supply of better action movies, then only then will this be a valid option, even for Friday night escapism.