So you missed some of last month's Oscar winners? You probably also missed last year's blockbuster action smash. And that is what airplane travel is designed to remedy. There are times while flying
when it becomes prudent to find a movie whose plot will keep your attention
without working with the low oxygen in the cabin air to further twist your
brain. Recognisable stars, whose inability to play very far from
their established personae, are a must, because you have to be able
to flow with the character development despite missing crucial bits
of dialogue because only one ear functions on your headset, or the
first officer and head stewardess are hogging the microphone like
neophytes doing their first stand up, or at least one person in
front, behind, or beside you has their own attention span problem and
moves you, bangs you, excuses himself past you, talks through you, at
every possible moment. You'd like a villain who will ham it up and
die with a wry ironic smile of self-deprecation. Maybe a comely woman
or two, one of whom should be eye candy and another who should be one
of a couple of cast members who really can act and be wasted in
supporting roles which seem to have been written by a scripter on
loan from Minecraft.
You are looking for
something like Escape Plan.
It's a buddy picture,
of course, and it seems written as a vehicle for Sylvester Stallone,
as he gets all the good scenes that require minimal dialogue,
although many with eloquent grunts. He plays a prison security expert
who gets himself thrown into stir so he can figure out ways of
breaking out. On behalf of the CIA, represented by comely Catriona
Balfe, he gets himself rendered to a secret prison where he hooks up
with Rottmeyer, supposedly an employee who holds the key to reaching
a criminal mastermind. Rottmeyer is played by Arnold Schwartenegger
who, with Stallone playing straight man, turns into a acting genius;
Tom Hanks overdosed on Human Growth Hormone.
The new-found buddies
team up to thwart evil prison warder Jim Caviezel, who somehow
resists the urge to go full Alan Rickman on his role, and thus imbues
it with an awkward gravitas which never gets resolved fully, because
there is only one way anything ever gets resolved here. Caviezel's
evil henchman is played by Vinnie Jones, the ex-soccer player
best-known for squeezing Paul Gasgoigne's balls, whose presence in
virtually any action movie is a more reliable signifier of schlock
than Chuck Norris could ever dream of being. He's like what Jason
Statham would be if Jason Statham couldn't act as brilliantly as he
does.
The story moves
smoothly enough, there's a small twist midway through and what must
have seemed like a very clever twist closer to the end. But if the
premise is Stallone's ability to plan and execute, he relies to an
extraordinary degree on things he discovers by pure chance after his
plan has broken down. And he is helped immensely by the
deus-ex-machina Sam Neill, a doctor named Kyrie, which may or may not
be metaphoric, disillusioned by his service to Cavaziel, who simply
needs a few stiff drinks and a reminder of his Hippocratic oath to
crucially help Stallone. And the best twist of all is that the Balfe
babe turns out to be Arnold's daughter, not his girlfriend, a rare
piece of generational Hollywood honesty.
It all erupts into
automatic weapons, helicopter gunships, hordes of uniformed minions
mowed down like extras in a Bond movie, flames, tidal waves...you
know, the usual. And a final twist when Stallone's boss, Vincent
D'Onofrio, turns out predictably to be not what he appears to be—he's
too good an actor not to be a plot twist. The other wasted talent is
Amy Ryan, though interestingly, like D'Onofrio, her intensity seems
better suited to the smaller screen, or at least smaller movies,
where her talent isn't subsumed by monosyllables and explosions.
It's directed competently by Mikael Hafstrom, who seems to specialise in horror, which when you look at it, is very close to what this movie is--two action figures trapped in the ultimate haunted house. I was impressed by the design; production designer Barry Chusid plays on the blueprints of the prisons Stallone is breaking down, but works in elements of sf, MC Escher-like, and even musical sets--I kept seeing Elvis doing 'Jailhouse Rock as I was distracted by my mini-bottles of wine. But even on the tiny seat-back screen, he keeps it interesting.
I particularly liked the guards wearing expressionless plastic masks--by coincidence on the return flight I watched the opening 40 minutes or so of Cool Hand Luke. I'd write an extended comparison of the two films, but it would be useless: Luke makes you care about the people (even though I let my melatonin work and went to sleep; but then I've seen it 3-4 times already) while Escape Plan asks you to care only about the plan. Anyway, those masks are the 21st century equivalent of the mirrored shades worn by the chain-gang bosses in that film. But nothing is made of the masks, just as nothing was made of Stallone's rendition. Wider points are beyond the remit of Escape Plan.
So
who cares if the headset is broken, the guy in front keeps changing the angle, and the captain can't make up his mind about wanting those seat belts
buckled because of turbulence? Stallone just fell 100 feet down an
industrial strength air vent, and wasn't hurt at all. What could
happen to us?
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