No Way Out: the 1987 thriller that prophesied a deeply corrupt US government

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Starring Kevin Costner as a young naval officer caught in a web of intrigue, this political potboiler hits almost too close to the bone today In 1987, right before he became the biggest movie star in the world with a five-year hot streak that included Field of Dreams, Dances with Wolves and The Bodyguard, Kevin Costner headlined two films that offered very different visions of America. The Untouchables assembles a group of plucky misfits to dole out frontier justice against those who would seek to extort the American dream – it’s brash, gung ho and morally transparent. A guaranteed classic. Far more interesting, though, is No Way Out, Roger Donaldson’s 1987 political potboiler that’s equal parts pulpy spectacle and damning critique of the US project. Functioning as a bridge between the conspiracy flicks of the 70s and the erotic thrillers of the 90s, the film starts with a sex scene in the back of a limo (complete with a perfectly timed cutaway to the Washington Monument) and ends wi...
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End of Term review – art-school horror is fusion of slasher and country-house whodunnit

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Weird goings-on in a basement lead to Cluedo-ish suspects and piecemeal flashbacks, but here it is the audience that suffers in the name of art

‘So, you call yourself conceptualists, do you?” says the straight-arrow detective quizzing Melissa (Chelsea Edge), a cool-customer art student with three long lacerations on her face. “Mostly. Ashley wasn’t,” Melissa replies. “Unless anti-conceptualism is a concept. She was always about being in the moment. Expressionism. Impressionism.” End of Term has a fondness for bandying around the art-theory big talk, but this silly but stolidly genre project could sorely use a conceptual cutting edge itself.

Melissa is getting questioned after being found strapped to a chair in the blood-splattered basement of Ford Barrington art school. Strangely, there are no bodies – except for that of snooty art critic Damian Self (Ronald Pickup) in the nearby space for the students’ end-of-term exhibition. In Usual Suspects-style piecemeal flashbacks, Melissa fills in the police on the buildup to the butchery and the halls of residence gallery of Cluedo-ish suspects, including her vampish one-time lover Ashley (Nicole Posener), the suave Professor Leigh (Peter Davison, a former Doctor in Doctor Who), and wild card Garth Stroman (Ivan Kaye), a rumoured ghost of a Byronic artist obsessed with a credo that art must involve pain.

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