Starring two of the biggest action stars of the 80's and featuring a dated plotline from the 90's, Escape Plan arrived without much fanfare in a crowded October release schedule that was dominated by sci-fi thriller "Gravity". The clear antithesis to the high concept and ground-breaking Gravity, the pitch for Escape Plan is a pretty straightforward sell. Stallone. Schwarzenegger. Two legendary larger than life actors starring in the same film together for the first time (Schwarzenegger's brief cameos in the Expendables movies notwithstanding). Whether this pitch will find an audience willing to actually pay for a ticket is a completely different matter.
Stallone and Schwarzenegger had talked about starring in a movie together for decades without it coming to fruition but after the success (especially internationally) of the Expendables, they have finally brought the idea back to life. Stallone has achieved some mild success with the recent geriatric sequels of his two most popular and enduring franchises, Rambo and Rocky, and has managed to have a career resurgence of sorts in the past 7 years or so. Schwarzenegger himself has also recently embarked on a career revival after his foray into American politics, but his return has come with much less success. "The Last Stand", his earlier release this year, was a major disappointment and failed to attract much of an audience and it remains to be seen whether "Escape Plan" can escape a similar fate. Unfortunately, "The Last Stand" and "Escape Plan" both share the same problem: a poorly executed B-movie storyline starring ageing actors with starpower much diminished from what it was in their heyday. In fact, if in weren't for what is clearly a much larger budget, there would be very little to differentiate "Escape Plan" from dozens of other similarly themed action films you can find in bargain bins or in the deep dark recesses of Netflix.
Ray Breslin (Stallone) is a man who specializes in escaping from any prison designed by man and offers his services to penal institutions seeking to improve their security. Highly successful and commanding a fee in the millions, Breslin is offered twice his rate by the CIA to infiltrate and attempt to escape a one of a kind state of the art prison designed to hold the world's most dangerous undesirables. But all is not what appears to be and he soon finds himself trapped, beaten, and tortured along with the other prisoners. And in what may be an unprecedented event, Schwarzenegger actually has some dialogue in his native tongue of German in this film and plays a character named Emil Rottmayer (instead of being assigned his usual hilariously generic-sounding American names such as Adam Gibson or John Kimble). Rottmayer, a prisoner with information that Warden Hobbes (Caviezel) is desperate to get his hands on, soon teams up with Breslin as they try to figure out how to escape from what, at first glances, seems to be the perfect prison. Wary and suspicious of each other initially, they both endure horrible abuse in a specially designed "hotbox" as well as routine beatings and threats from the warden. As the evil warden, Passion of the Christ's Jim Caviezel plays the big baddie that all action movies are required to have and his subtle approach is effective and a refreshing change from the kind of over the top villain you usually find in such a movie. Sam Neill also surprisingly pops up in a brief role as a prison doctor who struggles with the ethical dilemma of being involved in such a horrendous place.
This film is an odd choice for Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom, who is perhaps most famous for directing the underrated Stephen King horror adaptation "1408", and horror dud "The Rite" (his 2003 Swedish film "Evil" definitely merits a recommendation however). Not much of Hafstrom's style or horror pedigree is evident here and the movie is best described as clean, precise and clinical in its approach. Everything done is very basic and straightforward; "Escape Plan" doesn't attempt anything new or interesting nor does it claim any ambitions to do so. And it subsequently follows all the old and worn action movie tropes: you have the good guys, the bad guy, the chief henchman...etc and you get to see plenty of the politically incorrect characters and gratuitous violence that are the signatures of both stars' films. Any character development is simplistic and very poorly tacked on although this film may ironically have some of the best (read: most bearable) acting of Schwarzenegger's career.
The strength of "Escape Plan" is in the concept but the execution really leaves you disappointed. The movie displays very little inventiveness and isn't as fun as it could have been nor as much fun as it thinks it is. However, it does have its share of campy moments and cheesy one liners that generates some laughs but one wishes the film-makers would have committed more fully to that style and avoided the pseudo-seriousness that also plagues Stallone's Expendables movies. Nothing really seems at stake and you know how it's all going to turn out in the end but that's part of the fun of these movies. They exist in a genre designed to be escapist and unrealistic in nature and in that respect, '"Escape Plan" may mildly entertain those seeking a simple diversion.
Trailer:
Movie info:
Runtime: 115 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caviezel
Director: Mikael Hafstrom
Screenplay: Miles Chapman, Jason Keller
Cinematography: Brendan Galvin
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