"You hit like a
vegetarian."
Stallone. Schwarzenegger. Two of the biggest action heroes
in movie history with a combined body count well into the triple digits. Fans
have always wanted to see them fight side by side, except the right project
never came about. Sure, there's The
Expendables, but Arnold's appearances were brief and they had to share the
screen with a bunch of other red blooded action stars. Escape Plan is the first proper team-up for Stallone and
Schwarzenegger though sometimes it feels like a film 20 years too late.
Stallone is Ray Breslin, a specialist who has spent decades
breaking out of maximum security prisons to test their fallibilities. Breslin
and his shifty partner (Vincent D'Onofrio) accept a $5 million payday from a
CIA agent to test the security for a black bag prison housing criminals no
country wants to house. The location is top secret so Breslin won't be able to
receive outside help from his associates (Amy Ryan & Curtis "50
Cent" Jackson), who are uneasy about the whole deal. He should have
listened because somebody paid a lot of money to keep him locked away for good.
Breslin is dropped into the Tomb and left at the mercy of
the ruthless Warden Hobbs (Jim Caviezel), who has used Breslin's own work to
shore up the Tomb's defense. Breslin finds an unlikely ally in fellow prisoner
Emil Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger), the right-hand man for a mysterious boss named
Mannheim, who holds the key to dismantling the European banking industry.
Escape Plan has
the undeniable scent of an 80's actioner right out of the Cannon playbook. It
has no desire to be anything more than unsophisticated B-movie fun. The story
itself is riddled with plot holes. Never mind that Breslin's MacGyver-esque methods
of escaping from prison are so convoluted that nobody else could ever possibly
think of them, let alone threaten prison security. These issues will hardly
cross your mind until after the film has ended because of the sheer screen
presence of Stallone and Schwarzenegger. They may be decades past their prime
and the banter doesn't have the same zing as it used to, but it's still a joy
to see them sharing scenes. The audience cheered wildly when the former
Terminator armed himself with a heavy machine gun. Jim Caviezel is suitably
cartoonish as a warden so vicious, he hires Vinnie Jones as his head guard. He
starts by doing the low-key, minimalist performance as seen on Person of Interest and then turns the
dial up past 11 when he has to. Sam Neill and Amy Ryan are absolutely wasted in
the throwaway roles of the weary prison doctor and Breslin's right-hand woman,
respectively. Finally, the less said about Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson
woefully miscast as a computer expert, the better.
Escape Plan pales
in comparison to action classics like Predator,
First Blood, and The Terminator, but it's certainly worth a viewing should it pop up
on Netflix.
Rating: ** (*****)
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