Escape Plan (2013)

Genre : Action
Country: USA

Cast :
Arnold Schwarzenegger : Ray Breslin
Sylvester Stallone : Emil Rottmayer
Jim Caviezel : Hobbes

Regisseur :
Mikael Hafström

Summary
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.

My opinion
Heh heh. You hit like a vegetarian!

Now this was a movie to sit back and enjoy watching two old action veterans doing it all over again. Who thought these two gentlemen would be completely extinguished and only live on their well-deserved reputation of the past, was definitely wrong. Forget "The Expendables", "The Last Stand" and "Bullet to the head", and don't assume that this movie is comparable. Stallone and Schwarzenegger once again prove that they are still able to present a movie that’s entertaining, action-packed and dressed with a touch of humor. There is even a glimpse of a story. How is that possible ! Obviously you can see that some years have passed after they have been rolling their biceps frightfully in “Conan” and “Rambo”. But they still look tough enough and are able to kick some butt.

Admittedly the topic "Escaping from a prison" isn't very original. The fact that Ray Breslin (Sly) is an expert in this field and volunteers to be locked into such facilities to find the weaknesses and always manages to escape , I found a brilliant idea. The ultimate test he has to take is on an unknown place for his team and turns out to be a hard mission to deal with . Emil Rottmayer (Arnie) is also locked up in this prison and eventually helps to ensure that Ray can escape and catch the person that set him up in the first place.

Stallone plays a convincing role as an expert and I'm sure he kept training hard in all these years since he still looks stunningly muscled. Schwarzenegger also still has rock hard muscles, only his facial features betray his upcoming retirement. To my surprise he tries a rather successful attempt at acting. It's not just a mumbled English with a heavy Austrian accent. No way. Sometimes there are full dialogues, sometimes surprisingly with a comedic twist. The moment he starts whining in his own mother tongue while in the isolation cell, is actually hilarious but also admirable convincing. The scene on the stairs where they make a snapshot made me laugh so hard I almost had tears in my eyes . I repeated that fragment probably five times ! The action part is similar to the better films in which both men have acted and not the plain dumb violence as used in “Commando” or the latest “Rambo” movie which apparently was intended to get the score of shot opponents as high as possible. I thought the end was perhaps a bit exaggerated and over the top. But that didn’t really bother me at all.

The supporting roles weren't that bad either. Jim Caviezel played convincingly the ice-cold prison director Hobbes . Even 50 Cent didn’t irritate me this time and wasn't that bad.

Are you in for a decent and nicely put together action movie, then "Escape Plan" is a must see. It’s filled with guaranteed action scenes and humorous one-liners . Sly and Arnie thus prove that they really are the crème de la crème in this genre . Hopefully there will be even more enjoyable movies like this in the future !