ESCAPE PLAN 2

2018 | DIR. STEVEN C MILLER | REVIEW BY SHAUN CRAWFORD.

You’d be forgiven for never having heard of Mikael Halfstrom’s 2013 actioneer ESCAPE PLAN. 

Regardless of it being the first film of which Arnie and Sly finally shared top-billing, its moderate success in the US meant the the Australian release was straight-to-dvd (unless, that is, you were one of the lucky ones who caught The Astor cinema’s single big-screen showing) where it didn’t exactly set the screen on fire.

That’s not to say it was a poor film, quite the contrary. It’s $50-million budget delivered a slick prison-escape thriller in which Sylvester Stallone’s escape expert Ray Breslin is tasked with finding and exploiting the flaws in the maximum-security penitentiary run by head-case Jim Caviezel.

It delivered the goods as a throw-back 105-minute diversion that satisfied audience expectations without over estimating itself.

So now - 5 years later - comes the inevitable sequel, this time starring Stallone and Dave Bautista, whereby they hatch another escape plan to break out of ‘Hades’, the next bestest, baddest, scariest prison in the world ever.

​Shot in 3 weeks and directed by DTV-stalwart Steven C Miller, ESCAPE PLAN 2: HADES is almost everything you’d expect from the cheapie sequel to a moderate success; dull, uninspired and tragically devoid of originality.

Basically a retread of the original, Hades doesn’t even have the good grace to use Stallone as the star, instead, his 7 days on set saw him recording a voice-over to try and sell the viewer his presence without him flexing his 72-year old muscles (yeah, he’s really 72 years old) and instead give the lead to Jesse Metcalfe who, bizarrely, looks so similar to the films baddie, Wes Chatham, at times it’s hard to tell them apart when they’re opposite each other.

Like Steven C Miller’s other projects, EP2:H looks the biz but patchy CGI and an under-wrought story by Miles Chapman pull the film to pieces before it really gets a chance to get a leg up.
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Not surprising but a disappointment.
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