Review of Escape Plan (2013) by Rhynal R — 27 Jun 2014

Escape plan has a good idea but executes it poorly coupled with a terrible script, plot and C performances by its constituent actors.

As nice as it is to see Arnold and Stallone on screen, and that's because i'm a huge fan of both of these actors' old movies, their characters are generic and predictable. The premise is a good one; that Stallone's character is hired to break out of the most secure jails in order to reveal their flaws. I was honestly intruiged with the plot at first; then, came the rest of the movie. The script firstly, is down-right terrible. With over the top cheesy lines, one liners and sometimes, really out of timing statements that make no sense. This isn't helped by the fact that the delivery of these lines are completely monotonic by Arnold and Stallone.

In terms of character development? There is none. Like, at all. What I will give them though, is that they try to give Arnold and Stallone's characters some backstory; but it's so two dimensional and superficial that I found it hard to care about it at all. That plus, even when they reveal the motivations for each character, its so ridiculous that I saw no reason to support either of them. Don't even get me started on the one dimensional villain, who had no real purpose except to just be 'villainy'. No backstory; no real threat, and somehow, his acting was actually worse than his counterparts; and this guy's in Person of Interest, which is one of the biggest hit TV shows currently on air.

One positive is that I did find it interesting the one or two times Stallone's character worked out how to break out of the various prisons; and I feel like this was the movie's strength and they should have played on that; give me more sequences like that to hold my interest, not give me 'conversations' between two characters to try to make me believe that they've become friends when there's no real development and belief for any for them; more than half the movie is Stallone and Arnold talking about how they're going to break out them trying to know each other better. If they wanted to do that, go be in a romance movie, not an action one.

As an action movie; incredibly sub-par; as a overall movie, even worse. Not recommended at all. 2/10.