Directed by Mikael Hafstrom
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Caviezel

Grade: B

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine what a movie starring Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, both in their 60’s and both enjoying a modest resurgence, would be like. The movie you just thought of is Escape Plan, and I don’t really mean that as an insult either. The film, directed by Mikael Hafstrom, knows exactly what its audience wants and delivers it. The stars are recognized as old, or at least past their prime, though that by no means diminishes their badassery, and scales back most of the big time action set pieces, until the end of course. There is also a glorious lack of the tired “we’re so old” jokes that have been saturating the recent movies of the two actors in their twilight years. But let’s be honest: you’re going to see this movie because you’ve been dreaming of a Stallone/Schwarzenegger team up all your life and it’s finally here, and no, The Expendables movies don’t really count. This is not the movie they would have made together in the 80’s, it’s not a John Rambo and John Matrix team-up, but it’s still exactly what it should be at this stage in their careers. It’s an action movie, light on character, and heavy on dudes getting punched and cheesy one-liners.

The story is that Ray Breslin (Stallone) is the best there is at breaking out of prisons and runs a business with his partner Lester (Vincent D’Onofrio), pointing out the flaws in jails. Ray is hired try to break out of the world’s most secret and secure prison, run by the sadistic warden Hobbes (Jim Caviezel). Naturally, he’s betrayed and the incarceration is real. While on the inside, he meets Emil Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger), a fellow inmate who is imprisoned for the knowledge he has about a famous criminal. They become friends, of sorts, and together plot to break out of The Tomb, as the prison is called. There are the necessary twists in the plot designed to keep the audience guessing, but the only thing that really matters *spoiler alert* is that Schwarzenegger at one point grabs a fucking minigun off a helicopter and mows a shit ton of bad guys down.

Stallone has slipped into the haunted old bad ass role a lot over the last decade and brings it out again here. He brings his dead-eyed “I’ll kill you but I kind of wish I didn’t have to” glare and the plot wisely leaves out any romance. Well, mostly, there’s something alluded to but it’s not important. Stallone’s biggest problem has always been that he’s just not particularly funny, and these kinds of movies require plenty of snappy one-liners to remind us that we’re having fun and not just watching people graphically beat the living hell out of each other. Schwarzenegger, on the other hand, despite whatever shortcomings he may have as an actor, actually has a pretty well-tuned sense of comedic timing. The man delivers the one-liner like no one in movie history, arguably. Escape Plan lets Arnold get most of the laughs, and even gives him a monologue in his native Austrian. The two stars are always at the center of this movie and the secondary roles are just that. Caviezel gets a decent amount of screen time and makes some odd acting choices. His warden never quite comes off as a legitimate threat to Stallone, who could obviously wipe the floor with him in any physical contest and also seems infinitely smarter than the villain. A good bad guy is essential to an action film and Hobbes comes up a bit short.

Escape Plan is what it is, though I suppose some social commentary about the danger of privatized prisons could be theoretically read into the script, and the movie certainly has no love for the rich either, but both of those things are a pretty big reach. This movie doesn’t offer up complex problems because it’s mission is to take us back to our more innocent days when we could call on the likes of Stallone and Schwarzenegger to take care of our evils for us in uncomplicated ways and without any moral ambiguity. Plus, did I mention Schwarzenegger fires a fucking minigun?