Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caviezel
Ray Breslin (Stallone) is a man with a gift. A gift to go into some of the most secure prisons and discover a way out. As part of his job, he goes undercover in these prisons and is contracted for a new secret prison used only for the most dangerous criminals. However, as his job begins, he is drugged and held captive in the prison, whilst those in charge seek to make him suffer.
To a certain extent, you could look at Escape Plan as Shawshank Redemption (1994) re-imagined as an over-the-top and brainless action movie. Whilst that does sound spectacularly promising, Escape Plan is no Shawshank but it is very entertaining. Much of the appeal of the film largely comes from the two leads in Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger (although Arnie takes a while to show up) two hulking icons of 80's action cinema, now getting a little long in the tooth but still game to run around blowing stuff up. Jim Caviezel meanwhile plays the prison warden, seemingly borrowing a few lessons in villainy from Christopher Walken (specifically, the off-beat intonation, subtle as Caviezel does it) although the soft-spoken schtick does tire as he seems particularly more like unrealistic action genre cliche than the other characters (again, this is a film that features Stallone and Schwarzenegger, so it's quite the cliche).The supporting cast also features the likes of Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson and Vincent D'onofrio, who add detail but disappear for large amounts of the run-time and at times seem unnecessary.
On a design level, the film is intriguing, bringing to mind more of that early-90's action movie aesthetic, with the prison scenes bringing comparisons to both TRON (1982) and Face/Off (1997) but the plot makes no sense (the prison seems both a government installation and at the same time, against the government. How does that work? of the prisoners are Islamic fundamentalists who are seen praying, but how do they know, or even guess, which direction to pray in if they don't know where they are?). Were it made just five or ten years ago, this would've been straight-to-DVD but with films like The Expendables (2010) and RED (2010) being as popular as they are, this is getting wider exposure and there's something to be said for the benefit. It's dumb trash, but it's mostly fun dumb trash.
Next time, Asa Butterfield plays a young boy who becomes the subject of a new line of defence for humanity in the adaptation Orson Scott Card's sci-fi novel, Ender's Game.
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