Very Cool!!!

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Made for a TV audience in 1985 this is one of those films that needs wider attention. The plot is quite simple in that a small Outback school where only nine children of varying ages attend is overseen by an English school teacher. This is Sally Jones played by Rachel Ward ('On The Beach' and 'Against All Odds'). Then in the middle of a normal school day four masked gunmen turn up and kidnap them.Once they are secreted in the bush they soon realise that these guys are not going to win any prizes for being nice. So they decide to escape, but things are never quite straight forward and events take a different turn when they realise they can't run any more.Now to say this is a little beaut is putting it mildly. The children are all excellent especially Sean Garlick as Sid who went on to be in 'Home and Away'. It has the right pacing the right levels of tension and a rip roaring adventure into the bargain. This is one that if you have missed it then you have a real treat waiting for you in this superb production.

Sally Jones (Rachel Ward) is a teacher in rural Australia. She and her students are kidnapped for ransom. Four masked gunmen come to the school and stuff them into a van. An early escape is abandoned when they threaten to kill one of the kids. They are sealed up inside a cave. With ingenuity, they escape the cave but the masked gunmen are not letting them go that easily.It's a fair action thriller TV movie. It's got a simple compelling story. Director Arch Nicholson does a solid job with the different setups. Rachel Ward leads this as the teacher. She does a generally good job but there is a few overacting moments. The kids keep talking and she never tells them to be quiet. Some decision by some of these characters don't necessarily make sense. The finale is a bit silly in a Ramboesque sort of way. It's very watchable until the end.

I watched this movie when I was 18 and it made a great impression on me. I went wild, began to smash everything in my flat, and when my parents kicked me out, I continued to run through the park and scream and curse. Why? I don't know, but those filthy, cruel, ruthless kids and their nasty teacher disturbed me very much indeed. I even wrote a song in which I kill children and rape teachers. And that hint that the kids maybe became sexually intimate with the teacher also made me mad. I am discussing it with my therapist at this moment and it is very interesting story. I am 41 now, and I don't have any kids. I kinda have a problem with it. Consider it before you let your kids watch it.

It would be very easy to pick "Fortress" apart by challenging everything that is not dripping with logic. If you do that however, you will be distracted from a highly entertaining movie. The film is atypical, and difficult to classify. Part kidnapping gone wrong, part hunted in the wild, part revenge flick, "Fortress" is the sum of all these. Rachel Ward bravely adapts to the situation and rallies the children in their quest to survive. Featuring not one, but two separate caves, an escape swim through an underground stream, along with some savage retributions against the masked tormentors, "Fortress" delivers enough entertainment that the plot holes are best forgiven. - MERK