The trend of throwback action movies starring everyone’s favourite heroes of the 1980’s continues to lurch forward with Escape Plan, teaming up Sylvester Stallone – who pioneered the sub-genre with his Expendables franchise – and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who made his comeback as a leading man earlier this year in gleefully batty Western shoot ’em up The Last Stand.
It’s a combination that will make action fans of a certain vintage salivate but given the quality of recent films like The Expendables 2 and Bullet to the Head, expectations for Escape Plan could not be lower.
Thankfully, this thick-headed B-movie makes the most of its stars screen presence and plays to their strengths without ever leaning on their previous work. There are no played-out catchphrases here or tiresome nods to older films. Instead the film creates new moments and new one-liners that might just be quoted in bad Austrian accents and cut into YouTube compilations.
Stallone plays Ray Breslin, a structural security specialist who is hired to escape from prisons, finding and exploiting the weaknesses in their system. After an escape so convoluted MacGyver would scoff at it, Ray is tapped by the CIA to go test out a new maximum security facility used for housing criminals so nerfaious, the US government wants to ‘disappear’ them. Things get shady when Ray is drugged and tossed in a van – not his usual way of getting to the prisons – and only get shadier when no-one in the place seems to know his true identity. With no way of reaching his team on the outside (including Amy Ryan and Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson), Ray’s only ally is savvy veteran Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger), an inmate with his own secrets.
Stallone and Schwarzenegger have great chemistry together the film really finds its stride once they get together. Wisely, the focus is on the plot and the dilemma Ray finds himself in rather than just lurching from one clunky action scene to another. As silly as the plot is, it’s still absorbing enough once it really kicks in. There’s fun to be had in watching Stallone’s attempts to escape and Schwarzenegger excels in a role that’s largely comic relief, playing on his sense of humour and utilising that unusual line-delivery to maximum effect. It’s his best performance in a long time.
When the big action scenes finally come, they’re as ludicrous as you would expect and director Mikael Hafstrom is no expert at staging action, but the presence of Stallone and Schwarzenegger mowing down a small army of anonymous henchmen is a particularly pleasurable guilty pleasure, bringing on the pangs of nostalgia without resorting to knowing references.
For all of its pros, Escape Plan is not without its cons. What could’ve been a lean 90 minute thriller is stretched to almost two hours, leading to an uneven pace that leaves too much time to think, something a film with so many gaps in logic should never encourage. Hafstrom’s direction is bland at best and the schlocky effects and tin-eared dialogue are a continual reminder that however much we love the two muscle-bound stars, their stock has fallen and this is certainly a low-rent picture.
Nonetheless, Escape Plan fulfils its own admittedly limited ambitions and when Sly and Arnie are on screen together, it’s a fun if unrelentingly stupid experience.
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