In the film’s favour Murphy, at least when he gets the opportunity, is a better director than the perpetually over-the-top Gordon ever is. And to its advantage Fortress 2 is not as relentlessly brainless a film as Fortress was and at least rises to a level of routine competence. Alas it is never anything more than that. The action scenes are run of the mill. The special effects are okay and the show at least mounts to a passable action climax as the space station explodes. On the other hand, the scripters have not endeavoured to approach this film in any more intelligent a way than they did the original. The space station notably behaves in a very un-space station-like way – it has gravity but doesn’t rotate; the shuttle makes a docking as though it were a normal airplane; crews are sent EVA in spacesuits that don’t have tethers. There is however one scene that does make for good science-fiction – the scene where Lambert is placed in The Hole, a bubble exposed on the exterior of the station, which rapidly pitches him between the extremes of burning direct sunlight and icy freezing as it rotates. And to its credit the film features a quite suspenseful scene where Lambert goes out of an airlock without a spacesuit and where for once in a film his head quite scientifically accurately doesn’t explode within five seconds of exposure to a vacuum.

Christopher Lambert is his usual wooden self, while Pam Grier plays over-the-top. British actor Patrick Malahide is badly miscast as the new prison governor, where Malahide’s line in caustically dripping superiority and fey taunts makes the role come out rather campy.