`Nowhere To Run' Is Uninspiring

X 1/2 "Nowhere to Run," with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Rosanna Arquette, Kieran Culkin, Ted Levine, Joss Ackland. Directed by Robert Harmon, from a screenplay by Joe Ezsterhas, Leslie Bohem and Randy Feldman. Grand Cinemas, Factoria, Newmark, Parkway Plaza, Gateway 8, Aurora Village. "R" - restricted, due to violence, profanity, brief nudity. --------------------------------------------------------------- When the story for "Nowhere to Run" was conceived a decade ago by the late director Richard Marquand and today's most grotesquely overpaid screenwriter, Joe Ezsterhas, Jean-Claude Van Damme was a complete unknown, honing his martial-arts skills with his first glimmer of action-movie stardom lurking on the horizon.

Now that Van Damme has established himself as a bankable commodity along with Schwarzennegger and Steven Seagal, his movie projects are specifically tailored to his extremely limited screen persona.

He can try to branch out into new "acting" challenges, but only as long as he continues to deliver a few hundred body blows, head-slams, hang-time leaps and bone-breaking kicks. These things are, after all, his stock in trade.

That's why you won't find any evidence of the quality that Marquand and Ezsterhas might have brought to their original story - the quality of intelligent thriller construction that Marquand demonstrated in "Eye of the Needle" and Ezsterhas in his script for "Basic Instinct."

Having been reworked, warmed over and homogenized, "Nowhere to Run" is now a tepid, yawn-inducing programmer that is unlikely to excite even Van Damme's most loyal fans.

The plot is so ineptly formulaic that it makes Van Damme's previous action film, "Universal Soldier," seem like a masterpiece by comparison. Here J-C plays a former bank robber who, when sprung from a prison bus by his partner in crime, hides out on the 120-acre California valley farmland owned by a lonely widow (Rosanna Arquette) who is fighting to protect her land and two children from a ruthless land developer (Joss Ackland) who wants to force her out.

The strong-arm tactics intensify when Ackland brings in a bully played by Ted Levine, whose nastiness here is nothing compared to his "Buffalo Bill" role in "The Silence of the Lambs." Batting cleanup after a series of threatening attacks on Arquette's home and family, Levine talks a good game, but it's only a matter of time before Van Damme gives him the what-for.

It seems like an eternity before the blandly routine action kicks in, preceded by the standard spark between the pouty Arquette - now relegated to vacuous dialogue and a pair of peek-a-boo nude scenes - and Van Damme, who is a big hit with Arquette's young son (Kieran Culkin, Macaulay's little brother). This attempt at a "Shane"-like connection is so flat that if finally becomes laughable.

In the film's press notes, much is made of the fact that director Robert Harmon turned down many, many projects after scoring an action hit with his violent 1986 debut "The Hitcher."

The fact that he finally chose "Nowhere to Run" indicates more desperation than discretion, and although his visual style is adequately slick, the film feels like it was made on auto-pilot.

"Nowhere to Run" isn't the worst of its kind - it's just painfully uninspired. Perhaps that partially accounts for Van Damme's apparent disinterest. With one expression at his command, it's surprising that he actually musters three distinct acting styles: concrete, steel, and petrified wood.