Escape Plan (2013)
Directed by Mikael Håfström
Ray Breslin is the world's foremost authority on structural security. After analyzing every high security prison and learning a vast array of survival skills so he can design escape-proof prisons, his skills are put to the test. He's framed and incarcerated in a master prison he designed himself. He needs to escape and find the person who put him behind bars.
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And if you ever want to see a classic example of a movie that tried to do something similar but didn't quite succeed, take a look at "Smart Money," the 1931 Warner Bros. film that tried to marry the worlds of the two great gangster actors of the day, Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney.
Prison escape films are often fun because we understand the layout and can follow along as the heroes attempt their breakout (the 1963 WWII classic The Great Escape remains the undisputed king of the genre).
Where the most enjoyable films in the genre succeed -- movies like "The Great Escape" and "Escape From Alcatraz" -- it's in the way the filmmaker nurses the suspense of the story along, repeatedly surprising the audience and always keeping the emphasis on the grand escape we know is coming.
But waiting until 2013 for the two tough-guy icons to finally team up (not counting Schwarzenegger’s cameos in the Expendables movies) has deflated much of the appeal, and Escape Plan is less Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Heat , more Pacino and De Niro in Righteous Kill .
The upcoming Grudge Match is little more than “Rocky meets Raging Bull.”
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It's done in a way that is reminiscent of the way Sherlock Holmes analyzes his surroundings in Guy Ritchie 's " Sherlock Holmes ."
Of course, this isn’t exactly Escape From Alcatraz.
Where the most enjoyable films in the genre succeed -- movies like "The Great Escape" and "Escape From Alcatraz" -- it's in the way the filmmaker nurses the suspense of the story along, repeatedly surprising the audience and always keeping the emphasis on the grand escape we know is coming.
The past record of director Mikael Håfström suggests a film of tacky excess, à la 1408 and The Rite.
Director Mikael Håfström ("Evil," "1408") applies more gloss than Stallone's cheesier "Expendables" franchise while production designer Barry Chusid ("Source Code") serves up a high tech prison facility that's like a futuristic nod to Stallone's honeycombed "Demolition Man" deep freeze.
Director Mikael Håfström (“1408” “Derailed”) is at his best studying his stars and their surroundings in extreme closeups.
Directed by Mikael Håfström (The Rite, 1408), the movie stars Stallone as Ray Breslin, who runs an elite company that investigates the vulnerability of maximum-security prisons.
It helps that director Mikael Hafstrom (“1408”) makes the material look better than it is.
Unfortunately, Bruce Willis is AWOL from "Escape Plan" as well as "The Expendables 3," so don't expect any "Die Hard" cameos soon, with or without a vengeance.
This is a conservatively made action film along the lines of the original “Die Hard.”
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Jim Caviezel plays the super-prison’s softspoken, sadistic warden, whose butterfly collection suggests he’s a big fan of “Papillon.”
At the end of the day, we aren’t looking for Citizen Kane here, just a simple frame that gets us in orbit of the two juggernauts and lets them spin off each other in entertaining ways.