Review escape plan 3 full#
Yet grand statements are hardly part of director Mikael Hafstrom’s m.o., and after an occasionally dull middle third - including a needless bit of backstory for Breslin that Stallone almost seems embarrassed to relate - the film comes alive for the climactic jailbreak, as Schwarzenegger finally gets to go full “Commando” with a ludicrously oversized machine gun. And considering the Republican political affiliations of its stars - not to mention the Reaganite jingoism of ‘80s actioners in general - the pic exhibits a surprisingly liberal bent: Corporatized prisons, extraordinary rendition, waterboarding and Blackwater are unambiguously decried, while a gang of Arab Muslims prove to be key allies. His Rottmayer quickly becomes Breslin’s accomplice, and the two sketch out an impossible-yet-not-totally-absurd plot under the watchful eye of sadistic prison warden/amateur lepidopterist Hobbes (an icy Jim Caviezel).īy the standards of both stars’ respective filmographies, “Escape Plan” reps a relatively low-key iteration of their trademark skull-crackery fights are limited to punches and judo holds, with nary a throat-ripping or eye-gouging to be seen, and it isn’t until the film’s final third that our heroes even wield a gun. Gifted with all the film’s best one-liners (“You hit like a vegetarian” being the standout) and finally allowed to speak his native German onscreen, the former governor is all wild eyes and mischievous grins. While Stallone’s deadpan tough-guy routine reaches such somnolent levels that a scene in which he’s tortured with sleep deprivation causes little discernible change in his demeanor, Schwarzenegger hasn’t been this alive onscreen in years. Fortunately, he’s soon joined by Schwarzenegger as a fellow inmate, the gloriously monikered Emil Rottmayer, who cozies up to Breslin with suspicious openness. To put it delicately, Stallone has never been the type of actor who radiates deep analytical contemplation, and buying him as a sort of juiced-up MacGyver with encyclopedic knowledge of metallurgy, structural engineering and physical oceanography requires considerable indulgence. Employed by an ill-defined agency, Breslin works freelance for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, identifying firsthand the weak spots of penitentiaries by entering them as an undercover inmate and escaping.įresh off a nicely staged jailbreak in Colorado, Breslin is hired by a CIA operative for double his usual pay to infiltrate a new, privately funded black-site facility intended to house “the worst of the worst.” Abandoning his usual safety protocols for the gig, Breslin is promptly double-crossed and left to rot in an impressively designed next-gen dungeon straight out of “Demolition Man,” with beehives of glass cells and jackbooted guards wearing black Guy Fawkes masks. Miller) are lined up with almost no concern for either narrative cohesion or excitement.Looking as slablike as ever, Stallone stars as Ray Breslin, a former lawyer who literally wrote the book on breaking out of prison (paperback copies of his august tome “Compromising Correctional Institutional Security” appear to be popular bedside reading).
Meanwhile, the anaemic action scenes (directed by a seemingly unconscious Steven C.
Both Stallone and his line-up of solid supporting actors (including Titus Welliver, Dave Bautista and The Expanse’s Wes Chatham) are wasted, forced to spout trite nonsense interspersed with fortune cookie wisdom (“Use what you see to map what you can’t see”). Filled with Star Trek-inspired force fields, neon strip lighting and clunky robot medics, the pseudo sci-fi facility is watched over by Galileo, an experimental AI that forces inmates to face each other in gladiatorial combat, for the reward of two hours in Sanctuary - the prison’s equivalent of a feng shui rec room.įor all its high-tech infrastructure, the ‘inescapable’ prison proves woefully uninspired, requiring little in the way of a master plan to defeat - almost as if the writer (a returning Miles Chapman) has lost interest entirely. While Escape Plan’s Tomb was an advanced yet believable pokey, Hades is - with no discernible explanation - seemingly transplanted from 50 years in the future.
Both Stallone and his line-up of solid supporting actors are wasted.
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