Some may be sceptical about Escape Plan from how it’s been advertised. Yet this is a step forward, as it seems that we are finally coming to our senses and learning that big names don’t always make a film amazing, or even memorable. Unfortunately, that is most definitely the case with Escape Plan, an action film which sadly fails to get the adrenaline going in its audience.
Action genre legends Sylvester Stallone (the Rambo series, the Rocky films, The Expendables) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Terminator, Total Recall, Predator) star in the cheap-thrill action flick as two prisoners locked up in a unique maximum security prison who must formulate some sort of break out strategy to escape the evil clutches of some very corrupt people. The story is made dizzyingly uneven by a skewed narrative, the pace mismatched- going from an interesting and diverse opening, through a repetitive and largely uninteresting middle section to a rushed, predictable ending with many convoluted twists and turns along the way.
The characters played by the two leads have reasonable back stories but suffer a lack of development while some characters are made to seem important near the beginning of the film, then fall into obscurity for the majority of the story. It feels like the writers ran out of time or were simply too lazy to tie people on the sidelines into the primary story-line of the film. The cast of characters between these two extremes isn't too bad however, with a convincing (albeit disappointingly two-dimensional) villain played by Jim Caviezel (Passion of the Christ, Déjà Vu) and strong support from Faran Tahir (Iron Man, Elysium), playing a fellow inmate.
The script is weak throughout most of the film, with forced conversations and some interactions between characters feeling cosmically bizarre and unrealistic. Expect writing on par with other classics we love to hate such as ‘The Room’, with some minimal redemption in the form of a few averagely amusing one-liners thrown into the mix. Realistically, the strongest way to look at ‘Escape Plan’ is as a comedy film, but to believe that any of its over the top clichés were intended even for a second to be tongue-in-cheek, seems an optimistic step too far into the realm of wishful thinking.
However, the true Achilles' heel of the movie has to be the missed opportunity to make the most of the prison environment as a setting and the failure to pull together the various ideas for the film in a satisfactory way. Escape Plan could’ve been an adrenaline trip into oblivion and back with a harsher setting, tighter time frame and more focus on the choreography of an actual ‘plan’. Instead we’re left with a mess. To get the real 80’s feel they seem to have been going for, I’d have suggested less wide shots and less CGI, more complex and interactive sets, some traditional grit and realism with tougher obstacles for the characters and more close-ups. Oh, and of course a motivational montage or two for good measure.
I’ll give Escape Plan a warmly generous 5.8/10, because it did make me laugh a few times, occasionally from a rare line of high quality comedy, sometimes from the zany deliveries in the performances from the cast, but mostly just from the general absurdity of it all. Do go and see it, there isn’t much else on at the cinema currently after all, but be prepared to suspend your disbelief and switch off your brain power for 120 minutes of entertainment at its mildest.
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