Three stars. Rating: R, for violence and profanity
By Derrick Bang
Sometimes it pays to approach a
film with diminished expectations.
After the comic book nonsense of
both Expendables flicks, not to
mention January’s distastefully trashy Bullet
to the Head, I held out little hope for Sylvester Stallone’s recent return
to the big screen.
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| Although trapped in a maximum-security prison that offers little hope for any sort of escape plan, Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone, left) and Emil Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) have a few ideas ... all of them highly dangerous, of course, and with little chance of success. But it's not like they have anything else to do... |
And although Arnold
Schwarzenegger cleverly parodied his advancing age in The Last Stand, also released in January, box-office disinterest
made that little action flick’s title seem prophetic, with respect to his career.
I therefore haven’t been
surprised by the disinterest in Escape
Plan, which arrives in theaters today after a rather lackluster publicity
campaign.
Which just goes to show the folly
of jumping to conclusions. Swedish-born director Mikael Håfström has uncorked a
tidy little thriller, which gets much of its juice from a clever script by
Miles Chapman and Jason Keller. The premise is intriguing, the execution is
engaging — if occasionally burdened by exploitation flick clichés — and, yes,
Stallone and Schwarzenegger acquit themselves honorably.
Indeed, they’re perfectly cast in
this twisty prison saga, which seems to have been shaped with their strengths —
and acting limitations — in mind. Håfström allows them to do what they do
best, and they do it well; the result certainly won’t be more than a footnote
in cinema history, but it’s a reasonably entertaining way to spend a night at
the movies.
Ray Breslin (Stallone) has a most
unusual career: He’s a structural engineer who specializes in prison design, or
— more precisely — the weaknesses of such institutions. As the “field agent”
half of the Los Angeles-based security firm Breslin-Clark, he allows himself to
be incarcerated into various prisons as an apparent felon, in order to escape
and thus expose design and (more frequently) staffing weaknesses.
Although ostensibly on his own,
Breslin always is monitored by his operational partners: handler Abigail Ross
(Amy Ryan) and genius hacker Hush (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson). Partner Lester
Clark (Vincent D’Onofrio) acts as the company “face,” securing the assignments
and managing the tidy sums that Breslin charges for his talents.
Following the completion of yet
another routine assignment, Breslin is offered a tantalizing challenge by CIA
operative Jessica Miller (Caitriona Balfe). Wanting to remove the political
stink left by a decade’s worth of nasty headlines concerning Guantanamo Bay and
extraordinary rendition, shadowy U.S. black-ops agencies have collaborated to construct
a top-secret über-prison at an undisclosed location, well away from prying
media eyes. The goal is to keep its
dangerous occupants locked up, no matter how clever — or desperate — they might
be.
That’s where Breslin comes in: If
he can’t break out, then All Concerned will be satisfied that their “detention
center” lives up to its promise.
