While they’ve appeared together briefly in a couple of films now (those being the two Expendables movies), Escape Plan marks the first official team up featuring two of the biggest 80’s action heroes. Strangely enough, this leisurely paced effort isn’t particularly action-filled and is more low key than one would expect. Yet, despite its many flaws, the surprisingly entertaining interplay between the two leads is enjoyable enough that forgiving “old school” action fans may want to give it a try.
Breslin (Sylvester Stallone), is the man who literally “wrote the book” on detention center security and makes his living testing the integrity of prisons. On the advice of business partner (Vincent D’Onofrio), he accepts an offer from a mysterious CIA agent to check an off-the-grid private prison facility. To his dismay, Breslin finds himself set up; first he’s drugged, then his identity is changed and finally he’s locked away in the futuristic penal colony. Once there, our hero is tortured by an evil warden (Jim Caviezel) and his head of security (Vinnie Jones). Desperate, the protagonist teams with an unusually friendly inmate named Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and a physician (Sam Neill) in order to help him escape the world’s most secure prison.
The first act is by far the film’s least interesting, setting up Breslin in an unexciting prison break sequence and introducing his co-workers with some bland expository dialogue. It isn’t until his incarceration in the secret facility more than twenty minutes in that the movie springs to life. From that point on, it’s far more brooding and hard boiled, with long stares, grimaces and smart ass, tough guy talk between its characters. It’s fun to watch these two legends egg each other on, and this improves the movie dramatically.
Caviezel is amusingly icy in his office demeanor, giving harsh orders to prisoners and employees while inexplicably mounting butterflies. Stallone is suitably stoic, but in the end it’s Schwarzenegger who stands truly out. His character has to do more to pull off the rouse and is given a far wider range of emotions. Schwarzenegger makes the most of the opportunity too. Whether he’s acting crazy or bemused, enduring a horrible beating or dropping typical action film one-liners, the actor is clearly enjoying himself. It’s actually the best performance he has given in recent memory.
Today, these types of movies are out of fashion and don’t quite have the same budgets at their disposal as they used to, so the action itself is fairly brief and not as over-the-top as hoped. There’s no getting around the fact that the entire enterprise is silly, so why not embrace it? In fact, one wishes the film in general wasn’t quite as reserved. However, there are a couple of fun hero shots towards the close that should send a nostalgic grin to the face of any fan. The movie itself is well photographed and the prison sets are visually interesting.
Escape Plan won’t land on any “best of” lists for either of the leads (I’m not even sure that it tops Stallone’s Lock Up, a guilty pleasure from 1989), but it is a decent vehicle. Warts and all, there are some good individual scenes and it left this reviewer with the hope that these two actors re-team on another project with more outrageous action thrills.