Sunday, November 3, 2013

Escape Plan - Movie Review


Escape Plan is an action movie about a guy who breaks out of prisons for a living starring Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The movie is directed by Mikael Håfström and the screenplay was written by Miles Chapman and Jason Keller.


Ray Breslin (Stallone) is the best at what he does. What he does is break out of prisons for the purpose of improving them and he even wrote a book about his experiences. His partner Lester Clark (Vincent D'Onofrio) sets up each of the jobs and Breslin is assisted by a computer whiz named Hush (Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson) and Abigail (Amy Ryan) although it's not quite clear what exactly she does.


After his latest job is completed, the team is made an offer by the C.I.A. to test the integrity of a super secret, off the books project that is being put in place to secure the world's most dangerous people. Breslin accepts against the judgment of both Abigail and Hush although Lester assures everyone that everything seems legit. Of course, when Breslin is picked up and taken to the facility, it quickly becomes apparent that things aren't going to go exactly as intended.


Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger keep making movies and for some reason we keep going to see them. Escape Plan is a pretty run-of-the-mill action movie that does just about everything you would expect it to and is actually quite fun. The two stars, while definitely showing their age, can still pull off an action movie just based on who they are. While camera tricks and stunt doubles handle the heavy lifting, Sly and Ahnold are free to be their true movie star selves.


I don't know if I will ever get tired of seeing the big Austrian mow people down with a heavy machine gun or watching the Italian Stallion punch the daylights out of some nameless bad guy and this movie delivers both of these and more. Alongside the two icons, we also get rapper turned actor Curtis Jackson, Jim Caviezel as the main guy, and Sam Neill as a sympathetic doctor type person. None of them stand out, but we don't really expect or need them to anyway so no big deal.


Like I alluded to earlier, there's a big nostalgia factor when it comes to watching this movie and it definitely does deliver the goods. If those two big names weren't attached to this movie, it would probably have ended up in the straight to video category, but even so, Escape Plan turned out to be a very entertaining show that I'm glad I took the time to see.




 


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