Based solely on the fact that Pam Grier was listed among the cast, I decided to go ahead and watch Fortress 2: Re-Entry (2000).

Christopher Lambert is the only cast member from the original to reprise his role (John Brennick) for this low-budget follow up ($11mil budget vs $48mil for the original). Pam Grier plays the head of Men-Tel, but clearly shot her parts in a single afternoon, mostly in one room, so very disappointing on that front. I suppose that’s why she wasn’t credited higher despite legitimately being the biggest name in the film beside Lambert. Patrick Malahide plays Peter Teller, Pam’s step-son and the supervisor of this movie’s new and improved Fortress. It’s in space this time. Karen is replaced by Beth Touissant (who played Tasha Yar’s sister in an episode of Star Trek) but it’s okay because she’s even less important to the plot this time around despite playing exactly the same role in it.

The core group of cellmates this time around includes Stan (Willie Garson) who’s implant (oh yeah, there are implants again) malfunctions, leaving him absent minded and delirious, Rivera (Liz May Brice) one of Brennick’s fellow renegades, Marcus (Anthony C. Hall, who is not listed on IMDB or Wikipedia’s pages for this film for some reason, despite having more lines than several of the other characters) the comic relief/tech guy, and Max (Nick Brimble) a secret Russian spy.

Teller runs the prison station with the aid of several bored guards and one total psychopath, Sato (Yuji Okumoto). The tension between Sato and his fellow guard Gordon (Fredric Lehne) gives them something to do other than be faceless goons, which is a decent effort for this kind of film. The prison itself looks worse than the original, and there are fewer shooting locations. Teller’s office (and a few of the other locations as well) looks like a dressed-up hotel room, and the control center for Zed this time around is little more than a closet. Also Zed is a kiwi now, and hearing her pronounce ‘Death Sentence’ as ‘Dith Sintince’ every time is utterly hilarious.

The dialogue is still terrible, but less fun most of the time. There are a handful of good lines, mostly between Brennick and Marcus, with probably the only clever line in the movie coming while they discuss their escape plan, and building a particular device. The gang has just discovered that their implants allow Zed to see through their eyes, so when Brennick asks if Marcus can build the device they need, and he responds “With my eyes closed,” Brennick quips back “That would be the way to do it.” so kudos for the exactly one good joke in the movie.

The film manages to be both more and less sleazy than the original. There is no actual rape scene in this one, but the threat of sexual violence is still presented as a joke. There is a lot more nudity, but it is nearly all female. Definitely no conga line of wieners in this one. Pam Grier remains fully clothed as well, so further disappointment abounds.

The plot is essentially the same as the original. Brennick gets caught while on the run with his family, including their now seven year old son Danny (Aiden Ostrogovich), and is spirited away to a supposedly inescapable prison. The actual escape plot is a little more involved this time, and there are a lot of little moments that make me think someone in the writer’s room actually cared about this one. It wasn’t enough to right the ship, but it was enough to keep me entertained long enough to finish the film. The two characters that sort of sparked my interest, Rivera and Max, get a smidgen of plot focus (and Rivera’s breasts get some camera focus) but are left underutilized like many of the best elements of this film.

Overall this is an uninspired follow-up with bad CGI, bad miniature work, and a criminal under-use of Pam Grier. I’ll give it back the half-star I shaved off of the original because they made some progress on the sexual assault front, but that still leaves this one hovering around 2.5/5. I would only recommend this one if you saw the first one and loved it exclusively for Christopher Lambert’s performance, because there’s not really anything else from the original here, and less to recommend it on its own merits.

My final thought is that Wikipedia claims this is an American-Luxembourgish production, and I am just floored at the idea that this is what Luxembourg is doing with all of that gold they have. They’re the richest country in the world by density of capital, and they apparently use their hoarded lucre to make bad Christopher Lambert vehicles. I thought that maybe Lambert was from Luxembourg, given his bizarre accent (despite the fact that I had always assumed he was French-Canadian), but that isn’t the case. He was born in New York and raised in Switzerland, by French parents. What mad Luxembourgish person decided that the world needed Fortress 2, and why? Anyway, I’m going to watch something with more Pam Grier in it next time.