BEFORE: Another Thursday at home, no place to go except a short walk out to get bagels and a loaf of bread. The place was deserted because everybody in NYC is expecting snow tomorrow night, and the weather reports are telling us to expect somewhere between 0 and 20 inches of snow on Saturday. I wouldn't mind zero, to be honest, but then why the heck is everybody staying home, two days before the storm? I know, the Omicron pandemic wave is still a thing, but rates are dropping fast in this area, just 9% positivity instead of the 36% high from a couple of weeks ago. So again, WHY am I still housebound? Right, only one job is calling me in right now, just three days a week, the second job booked me for this coming Saturday, but then the screening got moved to the following weekend, because of the approaching storm, and the uncertainty that comes with it. (Attendance at the theater was low in late December, the last screening I worked had THREE people in the audience.). Bottom line, I'm going cuckoo bananas at home, and I applied for a THIRD part-time job, transcribing captions for movie files, which would be working from home, during my free time from the other two jobs, only I haven't heard back yet about my application. Cuckoo bananas.
Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson carries over again from "Freelancers".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Escape Plan" (Movie #2,230)
THE PLOT: Years after he fought his way out of an inescapable prison, Ray Breslin has organized a new top-notch security force. But when one of his team members goes missing, Breslin must return to the hell he once escaped from.
AFTER: Tonight's film isn't on Netflix, or Hulu, or even Pluto TV - yeah, that's a bad sign. It's on Amazon Prime, but not for free (another warning sign) but I chose to watch it on iTunes, for just $1.99 and even then, I think I paid too much. Most GOOD films are on iTunes for a $3.99 rental, so that's probably strike three against this film, nobody rented it for $4 so they cut the price to $2.
It's old home week, with many actors in this film having been seen before in one film or another this month, and that's because EFO Films isn't just the home of cheap Bruce Willis action movies, it's the studio that made the first "Escape Plan" movie, released back in 2013. That first film had both Stallone AND Schwarzenegger in it, but Ah-nold is nowhere to be seen in this sequel from 2018. He went a while without making any movies, nothing released between 2005 and 2010, now I can't remember why, something about being a politician? Governor of something? Anyway, he got back into action movies with "The Expendables", "The Last Stand" and "Escape Plan", so that doesn't really explain why he's absent from this sequel, unless he wanted too much money, or was just too busy.
Anyway, Stallone's character, Ray Breslin, managed to soldier on without the guy he met in prison (ah, yes, I'm re-reading the plot of the original "Escape Plan", and now I see why Arnold's character didn't return, makes perfect sense). So Ray's got a new team of experts, ones that he personally trained, and this manages to take a lot of pressure off of Stallone for most of the picture. The guy's not getting any younger, but then again, who is? Only two other actors carry over from the first "Escape Plan" movie, 50 Cent and Lydia Hull - Amy Ryan and Vincent D'Onofrio are absent, again for one of them there's a valid plot-based reason, and the other stars from that film were the villains, easily replaced with new actors in the new prison.
The first film also had a valid concept, a security expert gets himself thrown in prison and tries to escape in order to test the facility. Makes sense, as long as you don't think about it too much, but yeah, I guess somebody has to be an expert on breaking out of prisons from a design standpoint, so that they can be built better in the future. Ray's got a system, which involves figuring out the layout, the routine, and having help both on the inside and the outside. But this new prison was sort of designed with him in mind - without giving too much away, Hades (which stands for High Asset DEtention Service) is located somewhere underground, and was apparently specifically designed to disorient the inmates, especially if they follow Ray's rules for escaping a prison.
It's, well, it's not really realistic at all, I'm not saying it HAS to be, but once you throw a bunch of things into the prison design that are either impossible or not invented yet - like, say, medical robots, which is not a thing yet in real life - then your film has accidentally entered the realm of science-fiction, and that's something of a choice. It didn't HAVE to be this way, didn't have to be so ridiculous, because it ends up like some weird, random conglomeration that arose from some screenwriter throwing a bunch of, er, stuff onto a wall to see what sticks. Hey, people like robots, right? Let's add some robots. People like martial arts, right? Let's have a bunch of that.
So I'm left to conclude that some screenwriter did exactly ZERO research into the current state of technology in today's prisons, and instead just threw in a bunch of random stuff that would look cool, connect the basic plot points, and give the audience just enough twists to mimic some form of lizard-brain satisfaction. Why not do a little research? Why not do the legwork and talk to a couple wardens, maybe tour a max-security prison and ask about real-world escape attempts? Does that sound a bit too much like hard work? Or was the studio not paying the writer enough for that?
Stallone once called this "the most horribly produced film I have ever had the misfortune to be in." OK, so, umm, why do it that way, then? Didn't Stallone have any kind of script approval, or any say in the matter over what his character says and does? Why make another sequel (yeah, I'll watch it tomorrow, I'm committed now) if this one was such a bad experience? I guess that's a question I'll try to answer next.
Also starring Sylvester Stallone (last heard in "The Suicide Squad"), Dave Bautista (last seen in "Marauders"), Huang Xiaoming, Jesse Metcalfe (last seen in "Hard Kill"), Wes Chatham (last seen in "Tenet"), Chen Tang (last seen in "Mulan"), Tyron Woodley, Tyler Jon Olson (last seen in "Extraction"), Titus Welliver (last seen in "Shaft" (2019)), Shea Buckner (last seen in "First Kill"), Jaime King (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen 2"), Lydia Hull (last seen in "The Frozen Ground"), Ashley Cusato, Baylee Curran, Vincent Young, Eric Newnham, Mark Hicks, Pete Wentz, MIng Xi, Gordon Michaels (last seen in "Scream 4"), Jamie Eddy, Joseph Blake Menzel, Joe Gelchion (also last seen in "Marauders") and the voice of Mike McColl.
RATING: 3 out of 10 force fields (yeah, still not a thing IRL)
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