Movies like this make me wish I was a hack film critic so I could make lots of turns of phrase and puns about how bad this movie is and relating it back to the title and plot but I am not a hack and therefore take the highroad. I wish this movie could say the same. Oh shit.

Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone) breaks out of prisons for a living and he is very good at it. His company contracts out to the Federal Bureau of Prisons to test the efficacy of prisons and he has literally written the book on proper prison design. Aided by his primary staff of Abigail (Amy Ryan), Lester (Vincent D’Onofrio) and…sigh…Hush (Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson), Breslin has broken out of an alarming number of prisons and is paid handsomely to do it. When the CIA comes calling to ask him to break out of a new privately funded and thus off the books prison offering him double the fee but with none of his normal safe guards, Breslin accepts. But something isn’t right. Warden Hobbs (Jim Caviezel) is not the promised warden and Breslin’s evacuation code doesn’t work. The conditions are horrible and the team can’t find him. Breslin enlists the help of Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger), an inmate with shady connections, to escape and find out who it was that screwed him.

On paper I am on board for a Stallon/Schwarzenegger team up. I am a fan of both of their work in the 80s and 90s and I really love the throwback style cheesiness of the Expendables movies. What this movie delivers, however, is a complete mess of a film with glacial pacing, terrible dialogue, mediocre action scenes and a twist that couldn’t be more obvious if it was written in subtitles across the screen. It also blows a perfect opportunity for Arnold to yell ‘Get to the Choppa!’ Seriously, had that been in there I would have given it a 10 then and there and been on my way. As it is, it is too serious to be fun and too cheesy to take seriously so what you are left with is an often times incomprehensible movie that goes nowhere and takes its sweet time getting there.

A major part of the problem is the film’s leads. I can’t say that it would be worlds better with different actors because the script and story are still hopelessly broken but at least dialogue wouldn’t be missed because of their accents or manner of speaking. It has grown into a joke with these two but honest to god I felt like I needed subtitles because more than once I missed entire exchanges because Stallone and Schwarzenegger were completely indecipherable. Their physicality is fine and their handling of the action is solid but holy shit in a movie that relies on somewhat intricate details and verbal exposition it was a big mistake to have these two do it. I love Stallone and Schwarzenegger, don’t misunderstand, but they did not work here at all.

The plot itself seemed to think it was much smarter than it was and much smarter than the audience but it was woefully mistaken. When one of the movie’s big reveals happens late in the film and a character lampshade hangs by saying  ‘I didn’t see that coming’ I was embarrassed for the movie because the writers apparently thought that this twist was not telegraphed from the word go and that anyone in the audience was fooled and there is just nothing worse than missing on that point. You can feel the smugness for how clever they are oozing out of the movie all the while the audience has been ahead of the characters for well over an hour at this point.

If the movie had been aiming for mindless action movie instead of cerebral thriller then it might have fared a little bit better and the point is somewhat debatable as there are plenty of action scenes but few of these really connected for me. I have seen a lot of prison riots in movies and there are a lot more here offering nothing new between them let alone anything to differentiate them from any other prison movie ever. The action is less exciting and more an excuse for self-indulgent slow motion shots and an emphasis on cool poses over exciting action.

The only saving grace the movie really has is Jim Caviezel. His performance as Hobbs is unhinged, creepy and occasionally disturbing. Sure the quirky villain is not anything new but Caviezel’s delivery is perfect with just enough oddity without going over the top into camp or parody. I enjoyed every moment he was on screen and every scene he was not in suffered for it. Had the movie been about him, I would give it a hearty recommendation. As it is, it is a diamond in a lot of rough and makes this worth watching for him alone when it shows up on cable.

Conclusion [4.5 out of 10]

Escape Plan is an overlong, misguided and ultimately boring film with bad writing, dialogue and performances. Caviezel shines but that is the only real plus going for it. Some audiences my have lowered the bar enough for the action to do it for them or the out of place one liners to make them chuckle but on the whole this is a wasted  effort and is a waste of time.