Escape Plan (15.)
Directed Mikael Hafstrom.
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caviezel, Vinnie Jones, Sam Neill and Vincent D’Onofrio. 115 mins
Harold and Kumar’s trip seemed radical enough, but in their latest collaboration Sly and Arnie Go to Guantanamo Bay. Stallone plays a man who is employed to break out of prison, to reveal their security flaws. For his next trick though he has been employed to get out of a hush hush, off the grid subterranean government facility where the worst of the worst are kept. Oddly enough this has a surprisingly low Moslem population; most of the biggest threats to homeland security turn out to be bodybuilding Hell’s Angel types.
The Nutty American Right have been vocal recently about Liberal Hollywood and the socialist propaganda in film’s like Elysium, but the theme of the summer was the anti-capitalist messages in films like 2 Guns and Pain and Gain made by figures you’d assume to comparatively conservative. Now this culminates in a story where the former Republican Governor of California aligns himself with (by inference) an Islamic terrorist (Faran Tahir) to escape from a US security facility.
The film is the kind of bloated preposterousness we have come to expect from these two, which is just as well as though its premise has potential, the script has no interesting ideas on how to exploit it. Stallone’s first escape from a conventional prison is so convoluted that it would only be useful to the prison service if they had Sherlock Holmes locked up there. In contrast the big final escape is an act of boneheaded improbability. Indeed this ultimate prison is a big disappointment – wouldn’t they have though to stick hidden microphones everywhere?
Still it delivers the kind of semi-parodic low brow fun that are all these two can realistically hope to do these days. If nothing else you have to say the pair are great showbiz troopers – they’ll have to drag them off stage. At the end of his presidency Truman is supposed to have gone home to live modestly, turning down all offers of jobs on the board, but even that doesn’t match the come down of Arnie returning to the movies.
He doesn’t look as old here as he did in the Expendables but there are moments when he has to act shocked when he resembles Private Fraser in the Dad’s Army closing titles. Watching Sly and Arnie these days is much like tuning in at 4.00 on a Saturday Afternoon to watch the wrestling on World of Sport with Stallone as Mick McManus, Arnie as Jimmy Pallo. And those of us in the audience who chortle away at this silliness? We’re the old ladies battering them with our handbags.
To get round the limitations of the two leads the supporting cast is packed with interesting faces – and Vinnie Jones, who doesn’t seems to be able to deliver a line unless the F word has been inserted in it. He once threatened to have a go at Shakespeare and you’d dread to hear his To Be or Not To Be – the barbarian would probably split the infinitives.
Sam Neill is very convincing as the prison doctor who has severe misgivings about his current employment. The very day I saw it someone asked me about what had happened to the fat kid from Full Metal Jacket. Well D’Onofrio pops up all too briefly here and it does seem absurd that such a ridiculously entertaining performer gets maybe 5 minutes of screen time but you can see why his career never quite took off. He’s a bit too much, in his performances he seems to be swirling around to a different tune and there’s very little for his fellow performers to interact with.
In the end the film’s chief showboater is Caviezel as the evil prison warden who puts on a real turn. I didn’t know he had in him. Until the final credits I assumed I was watching Eric Roberts.
Directed Mikael Hafstrom.
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caviezel, Vinnie Jones, Sam Neill and Vincent D’Onofrio. 115 mins
Harold and Kumar’s trip seemed radical enough, but in their latest collaboration Sly and Arnie Go to Guantanamo Bay. Stallone plays a man who is employed to break out of prison, to reveal their security flaws. For his next trick though he has been employed to get out of a hush hush, off the grid subterranean government facility where the worst of the worst are kept. Oddly enough this has a surprisingly low Moslem population; most of the biggest threats to homeland security turn out to be bodybuilding Hell’s Angel types.
The Nutty American Right have been vocal recently about Liberal Hollywood and the socialist propaganda in film’s like Elysium, but the theme of the summer was the anti-capitalist messages in films like 2 Guns and Pain and Gain made by figures you’d assume to comparatively conservative. Now this culminates in a story where the former Republican Governor of California aligns himself with (by inference) an Islamic terrorist (Faran Tahir) to escape from a US security facility.
The film is the kind of bloated preposterousness we have come to expect from these two, which is just as well as though its premise has potential, the script has no interesting ideas on how to exploit it. Stallone’s first escape from a conventional prison is so convoluted that it would only be useful to the prison service if they had Sherlock Holmes locked up there. In contrast the big final escape is an act of boneheaded improbability. Indeed this ultimate prison is a big disappointment – wouldn’t they have though to stick hidden microphones everywhere?
Still it delivers the kind of semi-parodic low brow fun that are all these two can realistically hope to do these days. If nothing else you have to say the pair are great showbiz troopers – they’ll have to drag them off stage. At the end of his presidency Truman is supposed to have gone home to live modestly, turning down all offers of jobs on the board, but even that doesn’t match the come down of Arnie returning to the movies.
He doesn’t look as old here as he did in the Expendables but there are moments when he has to act shocked when he resembles Private Fraser in the Dad’s Army closing titles. Watching Sly and Arnie these days is much like tuning in at 4.00 on a Saturday Afternoon to watch the wrestling on World of Sport with Stallone as Mick McManus, Arnie as Jimmy Pallo. And those of us in the audience who chortle away at this silliness? We’re the old ladies battering them with our handbags.
To get round the limitations of the two leads the supporting cast is packed with interesting faces – and Vinnie Jones, who doesn’t seems to be able to deliver a line unless the F word has been inserted in it. He once threatened to have a go at Shakespeare and you’d dread to hear his To Be or Not To Be – the barbarian would probably split the infinitives.
Sam Neill is very convincing as the prison doctor who has severe misgivings about his current employment. The very day I saw it someone asked me about what had happened to the fat kid from Full Metal Jacket. Well D’Onofrio pops up all too briefly here and it does seem absurd that such a ridiculously entertaining performer gets maybe 5 minutes of screen time but you can see why his career never quite took off. He’s a bit too much, in his performances he seems to be swirling around to a different tune and there’s very little for his fellow performers to interact with.
In the end the film’s chief showboater is Caviezel as the evil prison warden who puts on a real turn. I didn’t know he had in him. Until the final credits I assumed I was watching Eric Roberts.
