Have a lovely day, ass-hole!

Escape Plan

(2013)

(SPOILERS) Escape Plan, Stallone’s third prison movie (I’m not counting Escape to Victory, but maybe that’s wrong) is also his middling one. On the plus side it lacks the abject sincerity of Lock Up, on the minus it is unable to embrace the unkempt energy of Tango & Cash. As full of illogicalities as the formerly titled The Tomb is, it might have passed muster if director Mikael Hafstrom had tightened the pace and sufficiently clarified plot twists that provokes a fair bit of head scratching. The consequence is, it’s left to Sly’s co-star to salvage what he can of the picture in his most enjoyable performance since I cant remember when (probably in 20 years). It’s just a shame its not in service of a better movie.

Stallone plays Ray Breslin, a guy who spends his working life breaking out of maximum-security prisons and reporting to their administrators on the systemic and procedural flaws. He gets an offer from the CIA (he thinks) to test a top secret, off the books, privately funded facility, which he accepts. Before long he is incarcerated, making pals with Arnie’s Emil Rottmayer and encountering a “good” Muslim Javed (Faran Tahir); Javed is only an opium grower and not one of those nasty extremist types (you see, by employing clichés the makers are making a valuable point about stereotyping!)

The opening sequence incorporates a flashback showing Ray’s escape, which is the kind of thing you hope the movie will excel at (although, I’m not sure how confirmation of the four keys the guards use as the passcode will help Sly; surely than only narrows the number down to thousands of possible combinations?). After all, the point of a good prison escape movie is the slow-burn tension of planning the attempt and the ingenuity with which said attempted is enacted. Disappointingly, when it gets to the stage of trying to get out the makers forsake cunning for running about and shooting things. There’s a nice bit where Arnie begs audience with Warden Hobbes (Caviezel) and it turns out to be ruse to secure a tool Sly needs. But such developments are few and far between. Mostly, plans involve staging a fight.

This is a picture where you’re left wondering why exactly Sly’s business partner (played by Vincent D’Onfrio, so you know he’ll turn out to be a backstabbing bastard from the first moment you clap eyes on him) wants to screw him over. Because the director hasn’t put enough emphasis on his motivation; it’s for the money, it always is, but essentially he turns out to be a bad guy because he turns out to be a bad guy. It’s the same with the reveal that Arnie was Mannheim all along; I think the idea is that the bad guys want Mannheim’s device, which can bring down the world’s banking system, for their own purposes. Mannheim, because Arnie is playing him, only uses it for some kind of wealth redistribution ends… But didn’t we gather he brought down the Icelandic banking system and “the bank collapse six years ago”?

The problem with a director like Hafstrom, who is technically adept but doesn’t seem able to judge natural rises and falls of pace, is the movie comes out at one pitch. This was a problem with 1408 too; a nice enough idea and sporadically effective, but it went on and on and on without variation. You end up with questions of “Why did such and such do this or that?” but the movie as a whole has failed to invest you with sufficient reason find it important. We’re asked to rely on Arne and Sly being good guys because they always are and D’Onfrio and Jim Caviezel being villains because they don’t really have that leading man thing (even Caviezel’s Jesus has a troubling edge to him).

Do I really buy that no one would realise the prison is out at sea on the grounds of “stabilisers” and being positioned in calm seas? I suppose the writers at least gave a thought to possible objections, but it doesn’t fly. I had that twist spoiled for me, but it’s not as if anyone familiar with Face/Off wont have seen it before. And it’s not a reveal of the sort that turns everything upside down. The inherent problem with a prison escape movie is setting impossible objectives. There are a few nice touches (the transparent cells, the THX1138-esque guard masks) but it becomes necessary to fall back on old staples (tunnels leading to opportune places) in order to get anywhere. There are some attempts at political commentary, but they feel rather weak. The implicit criticism of extraordinary rendition, the prison being run by “military and Blackwater rejects”, the references to the financial crisis. But it’s never more than window dressing, and as such feels slightly desperate; an attempt to boost credibility by aging superstars who never had any interest in saying anything to start with (and I include Arnie as governator; okay Arnie did come out with stuff about people being weak and needing leading early in his career didn’t he? Does that constitute keen purpose, however objectionable?)

Stallone’s post-Rocky Balboa reinvigoration hasn’t been up to much truth, be told. At least in the early ‘90s he was trying different things, albeit with mixed results. And then in the late ‘90s he did Cop Land. Since Rocky he’s been coasting on his iconic roles and ‘80s nostalgia (The Expendables). He hasn’t essayed a really memorable role, stretched himself or even looked like he was having fun. And Escape Plan is no different. Curiously, he’s looking his age more here than in the likes of Expendables and Bullet to the Head, whereas Arnie, who was really looking his years in both his Expendables cameos and The Last Stand, seems positively reinvigorated, complete with greying locks. Perhaps it’s the beard, perhaps the cinematographer had a beef with Sly. Lucky Amy Ryan gets to play Stallone's girlfriend. From The Wire to the bird of someone a quarter of a century older than you.

Either way, Arnie’s having enormous fun. He gets all the best lines too, accusing Sly of hitting like a vegetarian, trying to persuade him to lay off the pummelling (“Relax, it’s pretend!”), spinning Hobbes a yarn about wanting to be an artist before displaying the results (“I told you I no talent”) insulting Javed’s mother (“and she could polish a helmet!”) or grabbing hold of a mounted machine gun and opening fire with the uproariously delivered but bargain-basement quip “Have a lovely day, ass-hole!”. And the scene where he gets to mouth off in German is a treat.

As with any Sly movie that isn’t Rocky, Rambo or The Expendables, Escape Plan flopped in the US. In contrast it did reasonably well worldwide, suggesting the duo might not be put out to pasture quite yet. Arnie’s other comeback movies have bombed (to his credit, he seems refreshingly willing to mix up his choices), so it’s as well he has a no doubt CGI-aided Terminator in the offing. Stallone can rely on another Expendables. But whether anyone is interested in either carrying a movie solo any more is debatable. In Arnie’s case it might be a good thing. He’s making interesting choices. Escape Plan may not be a particularly interesting movie as a whole, but it becomes so when the Austrian Oak is in frame.

**1/2

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

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Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

Maybe the dingo ate your baby.

Seinfeld 2.9: The Stranded The Premise George and Elaine are stranded at a party in Long Island, with a disgruntled hostess.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) (SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek , but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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