Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #263382 in DVD
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Full Screen, NTSC
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, Polish, Dutch, Finnish
• Running time: 114 minutes

Amazon.com
This implausible, but effective 1987 film stars Kevin Costner (Bull Durham, Wyatt Earp) as a naval officer and CIA agent who may not be what he seems. This sexy thriller is an espionage mystery and an enigmatic character study of two men trying to be faithful to the loyalties they hold. Costner begins a torrid love affair with the mistress (Sean Young) of the Secretary of Defense, but when she turns up dead, Costner is implicated in a web of intrigue that threatens national security and exposes personal secrets at the highest levels. The Secretary and his men try to cover up the affair while simultaneously searching for a Soviet mole in their ranks. Featuring an exciting chase sequence through the Washington, D.C., subways, No Way Out is a standard issue thriller that nonetheless keeps the action coming. --Robert Lane

Customer Reviews

Gold-Standard of Political Thrillers now on DVD
Often, a film is compared to "No Way Out"--it's a gold standard of political thrillers. Made in the 80's, it holds up well in its genre. Now it's on DVD (without many "extras"--just the release trailers) and that's worthwhile if you are a political thriller fan.

Gene Hackman does his usual excellent job as a power-monger Secretary of Defense. He plays it subdued with restrained violence; you know this is a man capable of nearly anything. Will Patton is stunning as the bootlicking lackey, and Costner is reasonably good as the hapless pawn (?) of the Secretary's machinations. Sean Young plays a nervy, Washington bimbo. She's annoying, but actually, that seems to be part of the character and I thought she was superbly cast. The horror of the 80's overly-ornate costuming and gaudy makeup are the only hint of the age of this film.

The story is laden with clues dropped in a seemingly meaningless way and the tension builds superbly, racheting suddenly with a surprise in the action. At the end, another surprise is delicious, especially if you picked up all the red herrings (I didn't. Maybe you will.) If you love political or espionage thrillers, this one has a great payoff.

A well-made political thriller with some pleasant twists...
Having lived around the outskirts of Washington, D.C. myself, it's always a nice treat to watch a film that literally takes place right where I have stood, at one time or another. It's just very fun to know that a famous movie was shot where you once walked. (Although I now regret visiting the set of "101 Dalmations" in London--that's one story I don't often tell people with a smile on my face.)

At the beginning of "No Way Out," we get to see Washington from above as the camera glides through the air, swerving and going around in circles, until we land inside a small interrogation room housing a convicted murderer (Kevin Costner), who is in fact innocent and has been framed. "When's he coming out?" he asks as he walks over to a one-way mirror and looks through the glass. Right as we start to think, "Whom is he talking to?" (Or "Does he mean Hackman?" if you've read anything about the film), we fall backwards in time and land in the same place some number of months earlier.

"No Way Out" is a government thriller about an officer wrongly accused of murder--when the Secretary of State himself is the culprit trying to avoid a scandal by launching a top-secret cover-up. Costner is the officer, and Gene Hackman is the Secretary of State. After meeting a beautiful young woman (Sean Young) at a party, Costner takes her into a limo and they have a quickie--before they even know each other's names.

What's this got to do with anything? Why is my review so choppy and linear-challenged? We'll get there.

The relationship between the two turns into a big romance until Costner is sent out to sea, where he saves a sailor from falling overboard and is praised in all the papers--where his girlfriend back home sees his face and is reminded of him. (Now she's the mistress of Hackman, by the way--that complicates matters quite a bit.)

When he arrives back home, they go on a romantic getaway--but Hackman finds out and accidentally murders the girl while trying to get her to tell him the name of her lover. Ready to turn himself in, Hackman is persuaded by his gay friend to cover everything up and blame someone else. The gay man even goes and gets rid of the evidence himself--with pride, I might add. (It's like Mr. Burns and Smithers from "The Simpsons"--the latter loves the former, but the former is too powerful and naive to ever notice.)

The clever twist in "No Way Out" is that Costner knows Hackman killed Young, but Hackman doesn't know that he knows that. (Get it?) As he runs around the Pentagon and other government establishments, the evidence starts to pile up against him--the negative off the back of a Polaroid camera, a few eyewitnesses who claim they saw a man outside Young's apartment the night of her murder, etc.

The great thing about "No Way Out," and another factor that separates it from the rest of its kind, is something that's hard to explain to someone who hasn't seen the film. Essentially, no one knows who killed the girl--and Costner isn't placed under arrest straight away because no one has uncovered any evidence pointing towards him. As the negative off the back of the Polaroid is scanned through a computer and painstakingly altered to reveal the man's face on the photo, Costner runs around trying to eliminate evidence before anyone finds out. The photo will eventually reveal his own face, yes, but he has a number of hours until then to find the true evidence that convicts Hackman.

This is a smart thriller with a few pleasant twists, particularly the very end. It's not a great movie by any means, but it's well-acted and solidly directed by Roger Donaldson, who also made last year's "The Recruit" with Al Pacino and Colin Farrell. The guy obviously likes government thrillers. This one is a lot more plausible than "The Recruit," too.

Heart quenching and suspenseful.
After so long this movie has been out-of-print, I got this DVD the moment it came out in late April. No Way Out is simply one of the best Kevin Costner movies I've ever seen. I believe this was where he scored his first break as a talented action star with his sexy and heart throb good looks. The cover up story is very nerve racking that you can really feel the suspense around it. The movie runs for almost 2 hours and it takes you around the Washington DC area & the Pentagon and is worth watching over & over again. The chronology of episodes really intensifies the viewers until the whole cover up explodes at the climax. The movie also ignites with passion, as Kevin Costner fell for the Secretary of Foreign Affair's mistress played by Sean Young. Of course, Gene Hackman, one of the all time best actors around, also played a good role as the Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Sex & politics is just a hot topic of our times and in the coming November 2000 elections especially when loyalty and integrity and devotion to your job & countrymen come into play. That's what this movie stirs some criticisms but not this extreme. It kind of reminds us of the Clinton-Lewinsky sex scandal. If you've seen Murder at 1600, you'll gonna like this one. The DVD is dual featured in standard & widescreen versions, theatrical trailer and a special "the making of" track. It is worth owning it.