Escape Plan Review

Escape Plan Review: Middling prison affair. There are way better films to catch this week. Keep this for TV viewing, all you Stallone and Schwarzenegger fans!

Rating: **

 

Director: Mikael Håfström
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caviezel, Amy Ryan, Sam Neill, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson

 

It comes as a disconcerting surprise that a prison escape artist co-owning a Los Angeles based security firm would coolly break some police-and-prisoner bones (even kill some) only to prove he’s Houdini. If this man had an unwritten code of conduct that he wouldn’t hurt anybody deliberately or push someone (like Schwarzenegger) to do so, we would’ve rooted for him a little more than we do because he’s played by Rocky-Rambo-More Rocky star Sylvester Stallone. I guess Stallone can practically get away with anything, like a friendly neighbourhood bully who’s so popular among everybody nobody even notices that he uses a young lanky kid as a punching bag every Saturday.

 

His character Ray Breslin is also kind-of unfriendly and a loner who mingles with nobody yet somehow knows more about the prison than everybody. It’s really a miracle he can learn this much with little investigative effort, since its usually long-time inmates who know more than the rest about the area but don’t possess the knowledge/courage to make the great escape. Escape Plan doesn’t bother much about the rest of the prisoners, who remain mostly nameless and with ugly, grimy faces. It’s only concern is Stallone and Schwarzenegger, playing an inmate named Emil Rottmayer, whose characters are locked up inside a secret prison at an unknown location. You’d ask why, perhaps?

 

For Breslin, it’s another undercover operation to find out about disappearing high-profile criminals, a multi-million mission handed by CIA agent Jessica Miller. His money-hungry business-partner Lester Clark persuades him to accept the case, although his team-members Abigail (Amy Ryan) and Hush (50 Cent) aren’t so sure, especially when after hearing that little’s known about the prison and that the CIA wouldn’t take the blame in case something unwanted happens. Of course, Ray, with Rocky’s and Rambo’s blood still running in him through the medium of Stallone, accepts the case readily and gets himself abducted and locked up under the guise of a Spanish terrorist called ‘Portos’. The prison he’s housed in is made of transparent glass, with a complete lack of privacy for its poor inmates; its run by a creepy, cold-hearted Voldemort-like warden called Willard Hobbs (Jim Caviezel) and his masked men.

 

The bad guys, the prison authority, are unusually efficient in their duties and seem to have no other job except to make the prisoners’ lives miserable for the sake of it. Their duties too seem conventional, and there’s little attempt to extract information from these prisoners, which include, as the film states, ‘terrorists and notorious criminals’. It’s quite hard to fathom that too, as the depicted here neither seem dangerous nor important enough to be placed in such high-security. I’d rather reserve such slick prison facilities for maniacs like Hannibal Lecter and Jack The Ripper, people who genuinely seem a threat to the society. These prisoners are so dumb they pay little attention to Breslin and Rottmayer, who does a couple of favours for Breslin in return of escaping along-with him, as the two discuss their prison escape plans during lunch-time. It’s not like the two men whisper to each other, in fact, it seems their discussions are audible enough to be heard by anybody without hearing problems on the adjoining table. The prisoners remain sooo oblivious, when Rottmayer approaches a Pakistani prisoner named Javed and asks him whether he wants to escape along-with him and Breslin, the onlooking prisoners continue staring at the two instead of asking ‘ Hey, include me!’ ‘Me too!’. Who wouldn’t want to escape from such a hell-house? In this case, it would be these bone-heads, whose single job is to fight like b*tches from a season of Real Housewives of 1%-America or Mob Wives.

 

The film tries to add some depth, like in the beginning when it goes ‘Inception’ for a moment when the guy whose prison Breslin escapes from (the secret mission comes after) asks him something like ‘Why would you stay in prison for your whole life?’ (if you’re not aware, the protagonist in Inception spent much of his time in other people’s dreams and his own memories), or later, when Breslin’s character explains to Rottmayer why he chose such a rotten career (its really rotten, living inside a cell, and not even making a few friends during the stay), but it’s the kind of depth you find in most mediocre films that wanna escape the ‘shallow’ tag. You know what’s shallow? Introducing Abigail and Hush in the beginning like they’re major supporting roles, then giving them special appearances every twenty minutes for about a minute each time.

 

Okay, I’ll stop being a baddie and acknowledge what’s tolerable about this film. Yeah, it was funny when Rottmayer and Javed smile in front of the security cameras, the latter giving a middle-fingered salute, as the two escaped the prison with Breslin. Steven Boone, a film critic on Ebert.com, mentions a scene involving Schwarzenegger’s character ‘delivering a deranged monologue about evil and reciting the Lord’s Prayer, all in mellifluous German… to create a diversion for Stallone’ which, now that I remember, is also quite entertaining. Schwarzenegger is pretty entertaining, and so is Stallone (a little less, though); I still get a laugh whenever Schwarzenegger mispronounces an English word in his ‘Thuma’ (to us, tumour) accent. Stallone is dry at times, and its hard to believe his character can be so smart. It’s like listening to Shakespeare from American swimmer Ryan Lochte’s mouth (has anybody heard him? If not, check ‘Ryan Lochte dumb’) and here I blame the writers for not involving other inmates in the mission (a collaborative effort coordinated by Stallone’s character right from the moment he’s locked in would make him seem more intelligent in our eyes. And for a man pretending to be a ‘Spanish’ criminal, Stallone barely even tries an accent. If I were the warden and he told me he was Spanish, I’d scream like Judge Judy ‘Ha Ha! You are lying!’.

 

There’s a much better film called ‘Captain Phillips’ going on in theatres. Both the films revolve around ‘escape’, but Captain Phillips wins in every dimension: writing, direction, acting, cinematography, even music. I suggest you keep Escape Plan for television viewing and head straight to the theatre will everybody you love/hate for films like ‘Captain Phillips’ and ‘Gravity’. It’s time you make an escape plan to better films.

 

ourvadodara.in Rating Guide:

* = Avoid!!

** = Rent It / TV Premiere

*** = Book The Cheapest Seats

**** = Book The Best Seats

***** = Book The Best Seats + Buy The DVD!