The Survivor (1998) User Reviews (6)

Uneven fight

[unbrokenmetal · 5/10 · 5 June 2015]

After mankind moved into space, the old planet Earth is forgotten, a polluted wasteland where only expelled prisoners still survive. One of them is Tarkin (Xavier Declie). When a capsule with the president lands on Earth, Kyla (Richard Moll) captures the politician because he knows a spaceship will come to the rescue, and that will be his chance to get off the prison planet. Tarkin, however, fights Kyla to free the president. While Kyla rules over an army of gladiators, Tarkin has to rely on the president's little grandson...

Cheaply produced in Puerto Rico, this is obviously a mix of various things we have seen before, somewhat like 'Escape From New York' in the jungle, but you get the fights, explosions and freaky characters, it is not too bad to watch once.

Lacking

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 1 September 2019]

THE SURVIVOR is an oddball B-movie which appears to be a badly put-together mish-mash of other, better movies, namely PREDATOR and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. An overacting Richard Moll plays the usual bad guy who kidnaps the president (played by old-timer Richard Herd, whom you may recognise from ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and THE CHINA SYNDROME), and only a rebel has the power to tackle him. Most of this is made up of routine jungle action with some sci-fi tropes added to the mix. The lack of decent characterisation really hurts it, and the budget is simply too low to do the material justice.

Terminal Rush 1 is better than this.

[david-233 · 4/10 · 6 January 2000]

This film is also known as 'Terminal Rush 2'. The original is a very bad movie, but this is worse in every respect- acting, plot, editing, and so on. You have to avoid seeing it. The movie's premise is that the president of the outer space and his company fall into the earth, but there is no difference between these people and our people- looks, clothes, words, even weapons! It is a absurd thing.

Abysmal

[davis2000 · 22 September 2011]

This is a terrible movie in nearly every way, so bad it's not even fun to mock. Your first clue about how bad this movie will be is in the opening credits, the company that backed the movie was named "Puerto Rican Investors' Tax Credit Film Fund. If they have so little imagination in naming that group, how much imagination will the movie have? Zero. It borrows from a dozen far superior movies (No Escape and Mad Max to name two), has no pacing or believable dialog, acting that ranges from poor to awful (Richard Moll how could you?), and a story that tries to be complex but is only tedious. As another review says, it's supposedly set in a distant future where the Earth is long- abandoned yet they wear clothing and carry weapons identical to what we use today while following military protocol a group of grade-school laser taggers would ridicule.

I only watched this because the Movie Channel listing was very inaccurate, I only wish I'd seen the movie about an alien thawing in the Arctic to try to take over the Earth. That would be derivative but almost certainly better than this dreck. Do yourself a favor and look at an empty aquarium for 90 minutes instead.

Enjoyable but forgettable sci-fi actioner featuring a fantastic Richard Moll

[voliveri · 5/10 · 22 April 2024]

Not a bad sci-fi actioner. It can drag a bit in parts. What undermines it, for me, are some missed opportunities, story-wise, that I can't go into detail about without spoiling the movie. Nevertheless, I will say I found the heroes unheroic and selfish at the end, which dampened the ending for me.

The Outsiders, a tribal race whose origins are unexplored, are forgettable and seemingly unimportant. Other than filling time, they don't contribute much to the story.

Additionally, there were some egregious omissions when it came to developing the relationship of a key protagonist and the antagonist of the movie. The movie would have been far stronger had it spent some time on that, but perhaps they didn't want to slow things down any further. As it was, the movie had too many slow moments.

Performances were adequate. Xavier Decile is good enough as Tarkin, but Lisa Robin Kelly's performance as Devin is a delight. She's spunky, luscious, ballsy. She is one of the few sparks that elevates the movie.

Of course, Richard Moll as Kyla is the real draw here. He's menacing, he's calculating, he's funny--he commands every scene he's in, though I give credit to Richard Herd, as President Bradford, who more than holds his own in his scenes with Moll. \

These three performers bring life and verve to the picture.

Special effects were fine, as were fight sequences.

The Survivor is forgettable, but it's not horrible. You could do a lot worse.

Gravely underestimated movie - Intergalactic outlaws, savages and mad outcasts

[andreasj-1 · 6/10 · 5 February 2011]

As mentioned in the summary this is a gravely underestimated movie. Granted the cover and initial views on this movie is just another random B-Class movie. However, there is something beautiful with the rawness that this (obviously) budget movie has to offer. When me and my friend found this movie, we were mindset on a bad Tarrantino-like movie. However, we had to relabel the movie to a true classic sci-fi action movie, with all the necessary elements in it: a fugitive from the law, outcasts, savages and a half evil and half mad villain. You should however take into account that we had a couple of beers in us when we enjoyed classic (almost cult)movie. And we did!