“People don’t like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.”
-- Helen Keller
-- Helen Keller
Escape Plan is a movie with low ambitions and fails to hit even those. One doesn't walk into a movie featuring the weathered husks of the Terminator and Rambo and expect to walk out having learned something about the human condition, but even still, Escape Plan requires a suspension of disbelief that anyone with the ability to think about what they just saw won't be able to provide.
The movie spends the first 15 minutes extolling the idea that Ray Breslin (Stallone) is a man who "can break out of any prison designed by man" (apparently ones designed by rabbits would give him trouble). How this is a marketable skill is hastily glossed over; the first of many moments the movie will try to rush through to keep you from thinking too much about it.
The movie spends the first 15 minutes extolling the idea that Ray Breslin (Stallone) is a man who "can break out of any prison designed by man" (apparently ones designed by rabbits would give him trouble). How this is a marketable skill is hastily glossed over; the first of many moments the movie will try to rush through to keep you from thinking too much about it.
The basic idea behind any prison is that the person you're incarcerating still has value if kept alive. In first-world prisons, the belief is right in the name: the correctional system, the rehabilitation system; the belief that whatever that person may have done, they can be retrained into a productive member of society (whether the system delivers on that belief is another argument entirely). In "The Tomb", as the vast, cavernous prison is nicknamed in Escape Plan, we need quite a bit of convoluted storytelling just to hesitatingly accept that our two main characters wouldn't have just been killed by their enemies, instead of being sent to this obviously-expensive human stash. Now asking the audience to believe that hundreds of others would be kept as well, without word of its existence getting leaked by the people paying for their enemies' incarceration is just one of many fundamental flaws with the plot that means the movie shouldn't have taken itself too seriously.
But serious as a heart attack is how the movie attempts to play it, with the fairly-inexperienced Mikael Håfström helming, whose previous work includes the effectively-serious 1408, and the terribly-serious The Rite. Stallone does his best with the role, but his taut face and droopy eyes can't convey anything beyond "hangdog" at this point. Schwarzenegger actually spreads his wings a bit in the role, a surprise given how little he's asked to do, and his advanced age. The one actor who can't help but eat up his role is Jim Caviezel. As the Warden, he steals every scene he's in. His manicured, well-dressed countenance, constantly snapping his fingers at his subordinates to make his will known is obviously not in it for the money. He's here for the power over others. Criminally ignored since Passion of the Christ, one can't help but think the life Caviezel breathed into the role was entirely his own.
But serious as a heart attack is how the movie attempts to play it, with the fairly-inexperienced Mikael Håfström helming, whose previous work includes the effectively-serious 1408, and the terribly-serious The Rite. Stallone does his best with the role, but his taut face and droopy eyes can't convey anything beyond "hangdog" at this point. Schwarzenegger actually spreads his wings a bit in the role, a surprise given how little he's asked to do, and his advanced age. The one actor who can't help but eat up his role is Jim Caviezel. As the Warden, he steals every scene he's in. His manicured, well-dressed countenance, constantly snapping his fingers at his subordinates to make his will known is obviously not in it for the money. He's here for the power over others. Criminally ignored since Passion of the Christ, one can't help but think the life Caviezel breathed into the role was entirely his own.
Full of implausibilities, and occasionally dipping into actual falsehood (water does not flow differently around a toilet depending on hemisphere), Escape Plan isn't a horrible movie, but should be avoided if there are better options available.
A generic actioner with plot holes galore, notable only for Jim Caviezel's performance