Sylvester Stallone
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Jim Caviezel
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson
Vinnie Jones
Vincent D’Onofrio
Amy Ryan

Miles Chapman
Arnell Jesko

115 mins.
Action, Mystery, Thriller
October 18, 2013

Rated R for violence and language throughout. (MPAA)

“Escape Plan” is a prison escape film about a prison escape expert. That expert, Ray Breslin, is played by Sylvester Stallone. Yes, him. You won’t believe him in the role, but that doesn’t really get in the way. What does get in the way is his constant mumbling.

They start by showing us how this expert works: He escapes from a prison with the help of his colleagues played by Amy Ryan, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, who doesn’t completely embarrass himself in this film. Breslin co-owns the business with D’Onofrio’s character, Lester Clark.

After this introduction, a supposed CIA agent offers him a job that entails breaking out of a prison designed to house enemy combatants and other people whom world governments want to disappear. The company is paid double its normal rate ($5 million) beforehand, but Breslin’s not allowed his normal conditions for a job. He accepts anyway, despite the objections of Ryan’s character.

Of course, once the job starts, things aren’t as they seem. The warden of this new prison, played by Jim Caviezel, is up to something. And Breslin figures out that someone (probably someone he knows, wink-wink) tricked him into the job to get rid of him.

He meets fellow inmate Rottmayer, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who’s an expert at doing all kinds of favors in the prison: helping him to get into isolation, getting him a piece of metal, and so on. In exchange for Rottmayer’s help, Breslin agrees to let Rottmayer escape with him or die. Hah hah.

“Escape Plan” is shot with a camera that sweeps around the prison to show its structure and to mimic Breslin’s observations. It has the look of a contemporary prison film. The script is passable for an action film and, at times, gives Schwarzenegger the opportunity to pop-off mediocre one-liners, at best. He handles the material a bit better than Stallone. This is fairly obvious stuff.

While watching Stallone and Schwarzenegger together may be a thrill for some people, I’m neutral on that count. What is interesting is that they’ve surrounded those two with very strong actors, except for “50 Cent.” (Sam Neill is also a part of the cast, for instance. He plays a prison doctor who seems sympathetic to Stallone’s character.) Those actors do what they can with the script. They deliver the lines correctly and keep things on-track.

Overall, “Escape Plan” is a somewhat entertaining film, and it accomplishes what I’m sure its production team wanted it to accomplish. But it doesn’t exceed expectations (it barely meets them), and it could’ve been better with sharper material. One good thing is that the writers (Miles Chapman and Arnell Jesko) don’t shy away from who their stars are. For example, Schwarzenegger says to Stallone, “You don’t seem like an expert.” Stallone counters with, “Neither do you.”

Swedish director Mikael Håfström, who also directed “The Rite” and “1408,” has crafted another competent film that will entertain the average movie-watcher. It’s a thoroughly predictable and preposterous popcorn flick that benefits from being in the prison escape genre: It’s hard to make a bad escape film.

Verdict: OK

About: (Source: escapeplan)

One of the world’s foremost authorities on structural security agrees to take on one last job: breaking out of an ultra-secret, high-tech facility called “The Tomb.” Deceived and wrongly imprisoned, Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone) must recruit fellow inmate Emil Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to help devise a daring, nearly impossible plan to escape from the most protected and fortified prison ever built. ESCAPE PLAN is the first pairing of action legends Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in leading roles …