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Escape Plan

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Released: October 2013

Director: Mikael Håfström

Run Time: 115 Minutes

Rated R

Cast:
Sylvester Stallone: Ray Breslin
Arnold Schwarzenegger: Rottmayer
Jim Caviezel: Hobbes
Faran Tahir: Javed
Amy Ryan: Abigail
Sam Neill: Dr. Kyrie
Vincent D’Onofrio: Lester Clark
Vinnie Jones: Drake
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson: Hush

There are a lot of movies about prison breaks: Count of Monte Cristo, Escape From Alcatraz, Shutter Island, The Shawshank Redemption and my two personal favorites: The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Great Escape.  These are some of the best films in the genre, and they generally revolve around one plot point….escaping their prison.  In some of these cases, the story revolves around one character who was falsely accused of a crime and plots to escape and get his revenge.  The others involve a group of people who work together to find a way out.  Some of the best prison break sequences are just a small part of the movie and can be very memorable.  The jailbreak in John Woo’s Face/Off with John Travolta and Nicolas Cage is probably one of the best prison breaks I’ve seen in a movie.  Now, take that sequence from Face/Off and throw in Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger and you have Escape Plan.  Obviously there’s a bit more to the film than that, but if I had to sum up, that’s what you would get.

Opening in a prison somewhere in the United States, prisoner Ray Breslin is making his rounds in the prison planning his escape.  Ray Breslin is actually a professional escape artist hired by the US prison system to find flaws in their prisons to keep prisoners from escaping.  Later, he’s offered a job to try and escape a new prison designed to house the world’s worst people.  After he’s agreed to the job, he’s violently abducted and transported to the new prison.  The prison’s warden, Hobbes, is a sadistic individual with an equally vicious right-hand man, Drake.  Meeting another prisoner, Rottmayer, Breslin realizes that he’s in serious trouble and needs to rely on his fellow prisoner to find his way out.  The story isn’t really anything original.  We’ve all seen this kind of film before.  But this is the first time we’ve seen both Stallone and Schwarzenegger in a film together, right?  Wrong.  Schwarzenegger and Stallone first appeared together in The Expendables.  Arnold had a cameo because he still in office at the time, but he had an expanded role in the sequels.  It IS the first time that we’ve seen these two in prison break movie, however.  So how does Escape Plan stack up against the other films I mentioned?  The honest truth is that I wouldn’t even put it in my top 5.

I think part of the problem is even trying to compare this movie to other identical films in the genre.  Escape Plan just isn’t even in the same league as something like The Great Escape.  It wouldn’t be a fair comparison, actually.  This movie treads the same path as some of those other films, but it isn’t nearly as refined.  For instance, the main character surveys his surroundings and tries to pay attention to certain details.  I think another issue with the movie is that the motivations for the characters are convoluted.  Breslin says at one point he does what he does so he can keep dangerous people from breaking out of prisons, but it’s apparent there’s a very personal reason for it.  It’s never truly explained.  As for why Rottmayer is there?  We really have no idea who he is or given a reasonable explanation for his incarceration.  We know that Hobbes is a scumbag but it’s never explained who he works for or why he is the way he is.  The movie leaves a lot of questions unanswered, at least for me.

For once, Stallone and Schwarzenegger are playing human beings.  It’s kind of weird seeing Arnold with a goatee, but it seems to work for him.  I think he needs to wear it more often.  I think Schwarzenegger steals the show in this one, because he gets to ham it up to the nth degree, and it’s hilarious at times.  Escape Plan has some pretty interesting names attached to it.  You’ve got Jim Caviezel, who plays Hobbes.  He’s an interesting actor.  I like him in most of the stuff that I’ve seen him in.  He’s got a knack for playing understated characters or characters that are not over-the-top.  His portrayal of Hobbes IS menacing, but at times it can be a little humorous, but he’s not loud or off-the-wall crazy.  He’s meticulous and deliberate.  We’ve also got Sam Neill who plays the good doctor who got caught up in a serious situation.  Sam Neill has always been a fantastic actor, and seeing him play a character like this is almost unusual.  While he’s not a primary character, he does become important later on, and Neill gives the character a real sense of humanity.  Vincent D’Onofrio plays the head of the company that Stallone’s character works for.  D’Onofrio always gives his characters interesting quirks.  We see early on that Lester Clark may be a bit of an OCD/germaphobe-type person just be some of the stuff that he does.  I wouldn’t be surprised if D’Onofrio improvised some of that stuff on the spot.  The one cast member that I was surprised at was Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson.  This isn’t the first time a rapper has jumped from music to acting.  Ice Cube and Ice-T are some of the more well-known actors who used to be musicians.  Ice-T actually wound up being a pretty good actor, so it is possible for a successful transition.  Curtis Jackson doesn’t strike me as bad actor, he really doesn’t.  He plays the “nerd” of the movie so to speak, but he’s not terrible.

With the big action names attached to Escape Plan, you would expect to see a lot of action, right?  Wrong.  This is not that kind of movie.  Yes, it does have action in it, but most of it doesn’t really happen until towards the end of the movie.  Unlike Sabotage, Escape Plan isn’t overly bloody.  It’s definitely violent, but it’s not excessive.  Seeing a movie like this showing that kind of restraint is kind of refreshing, actually.  There’s a number of downsides to this film, some of which I’ve already mentioned.  The one that I didn’t mention was Vinnie Jones.  He always plays the same kind of character: Tough, brooding, swears a lot, and is extremely violent.  He’s good at it, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t seem like he’s got that much range as an actor.  The music in Escape Plan comes across as way too much and too grandiose.   It’s just way over-the-top and doesn’t suit this type of film.  I would have to say that Escape Plan is a pretty middle-of-the-road movie.  It’s not bad, but it’s not terribly good either.  The movie just follows too much in the footsteps of greater films, and doesn’t really do enough to make it unique.  This one is sentenced to 7/10.  It’s not bad enough to get solitary confinement, though.

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The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

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Released: July 2010

Director: Jon Turteltaub

Run Time: 109 Minutes

Rated PG

Cast:
Nicolas Cage: Balthazar
Jay Baruchel: Dave
Alfred Molina: Horvath
Toby Kebbell: Drake Stone
Monica Bellucci: Veronica
Alice Krige: Morgana

Recently, we have seen some iconic Disney movies get a live-action film adaptation.  Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, Snow White and the Huntsman, and most recently, Maleficent are all live-action adaptations of the older animated films.  Surprisingly, most of them actually turned out to be pretty decent films.  Maleficent is probably the best one of the bunch because it focused mainly on the villain of Sleeping Beauty.  The result was actually a pretty touching and fantastic film that gave us a different look at the most iconic villain in Disney’s library.  The only thing that was wrong with The Huntsman was the casting of Snow White.  Kristen Stewart just wasn’t cut out for the role.  Otherwise, it was a pretty strong film.  Tim Burton’s film was truly bizarre, but that can only be expected of Tim Burton.  Next year, we are getting another live-action adaptation: Cinderella.  Why are so many Disney movies getting this treatment?  I suppose a cynical person would say it’s for the money.  Business-wise it makes sense.  But I think there is an artistic expression that can be conveyed using today’s technology.  In the case of Maleficent, we didn’t really know anything about her character in Sleeping Beauty.  Maleficent gave us a different perspective and more background on the character which makes her far more compelling.  When I heard that Disney was making a live-action movie based on the animated short, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, I was skeptical.  The original Sorcerer’s Apprentice was an animated short in the Disney film, Fantasia.  I never would have thought that the short would be successfully translated to a live-action film starring Nicolas Cage.  Who knew?

Opening in the year 740 AD, evil sorceress Morgana La Fey is confronting Merlin.  Merlin has been betrayed by one of his apprentices, Horvath.  Nicolas Cage, er, Balthazar Blake shows up with Veronica to confront Morgana.  Unable to overpower her, Veronica absorbs Morgana’s soul and is trapped with Horvath within a doll.  Centuries pass as Balthazar searches for the one person who is Merlin’s heir.  Balthazar encounters young Dave in a small magician’s store and discovers that Dave could be the mystical Prime Merlinian.  They are attacked by Horvath, who has escaped the doll and both Balthazar and Horvath get trapped in a large vase, but not before giving Dave Merlin’s dragon ring.  10 years later, Dave is a physics student when Horvath escapes along with Balthazar.  Balthazar begins to train Dave as a sorcerer in the hopes that Dave can destroy Morgana.  Looking back at the animated short which inspired The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, you have to wonder how they took an 8 minute piece of animation and expand it into a film that runs an hour and half.  Essentially, it’s a very loose adaptation that happens to share the same name.  That doesn’t make it a bad movie at all.  There was really not a whole lot in the short except for the animation and the music.  That was it.

While The Sorcerer’s Apprentice draws its main inspiration from the Fantasia short, the film also draws on certain aspects of Arthurian legend.  The characters of Merlin and Morgana la Fey feature prominently in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.  In some ways, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice serves as kind of a parallel to King Arthur’s story in which an heir to a powerful being would be found and would become the next great king or sorcerer.  It doesn’t strike me as a coincidence that The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is inspired in part by the legend of King Arthur.  The casting of a movie is fairly important.  You don’t want to get the wrong actor for the wrong part, but Nicolas Cage?!  I never saw that one coming.  Cage is known for playing some pretty wacky roles, but he does it extremely well.  I never would have expected him to play a sorcerer.  He knocks it out of the park.  Cage’s penchant for quirky characters serves him well here.  Balthazar is a sorcerer who’s a little off his rocker, but otherwise a force to be reckoned with.  Alfred Molina is fantastic as Horvath.  Molina’s always played great villains and he does a fantastic job here.  He makes the character both elegant and slimy at the same time.  Jay Baruchel was an odd choice, given his comedic background.  Strangely enough, he’s actually fantastic.  He gives the character an awkardness and nerdiness that is both funny and compelling.  Yet at the same time, Jay gives Dave an extraordinary amount of emotional depth which keeps the character from becoming a total clown.  The clown of the movie is Drake Stone played by Toby Kebbell.  I don’t think I’ve seen a character with that level of vanity.  He’s nuts.  That’s all I can tell you.

This is a surprisingly exciting film to watch.  It has some extremely impressive action in it.  A lot of it involves the use of magic, but that also influences the film’s main car chase.  I don’t think I’ve seen a car chase that involves magic before.  It’s not only exciting, it also shows off the movie’s sense of humor.  This is not a film that takes itself seriously, no sir.  Jay Baruchel comes from comedy so he brings his sense of humor and when you combine that with Nick Cage’s quirkiness, it allows for some pretty hilarious moments.  With plasma balls flying everywhere and cars changing shapes, the movie really doesn’t let up.  The film also pokes fun at certain aspects of pop culture, including Star Wars.  At 109 minutes, the film doesn’t overstay its welcome.  Overall, it’s a surprisingly good movie with great performances all across the board.  I do have some issues with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,  though.  There are two characters who are mentioned prominently throughout the film, Veronica and Morgana.  They’re clearly important characters, but we don’t really see a whole lot of them.  We know that Morgana’s evil and wants to destroy the world.  But we don’t get a whole lot of background on Veronica.  Horvath’s motivations aren’t much more beyond being spurned by Veronica.  That’s it.  What I would love to see is a kind of a prequel taking place during Merlin’s time with all these characters together.  We see a bit of that during the opening sequence, but I would love to see how all of this actually started.  Truthfully, even with certain issues, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a pretty solid movie with some fantastic performances and great special effects.  This one definitely comes recommended.  9/10.

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Sabotage

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Movie Trailer

Released: March 2014

Director: David Ayer

Run Time: 109 Minutes

Rated: R

Cast:
Arnold Schwarzenegger: John Wharton
Sam Worthington: James Murray
Josh Holloway: Eddie Jordan
Terence Howard: Julius Edmonds
Mireille Enos: Lizzy Murray
Olivia Williams: Detective Caroline Brentwood
Harold Perrineau: Jackson

It used to be that when Arnold Schwarzenegger headlined a movie, it put people’s butts in movie theater seats.  How could it not?  This is Arnold Schwarzenegger.  This is the Austrian Oak, Mr. Universe, and The Terminator.  When The Terminator hit movie theaters in 1984, Schwarzenegger became a household name overnight, despite how unpronounceable his name was at the time.  His first real break was Conan: The Barbarian in 1982, but it was The Terminator that made him a star.  Ever since, he’s been one of the most bankable and successful action movie stars in cinema history.  With films like Commando, Predator, Twins, and Total Recall, Arnold has had some of the biggest hits.  Not all of his films have been successful, but none of his movies have gone direct-to-video.  After 2003’s Terminator 3, Arnold took a break from the film industry to pursue two terms as California’s governor.  He’s made some cameos after 2003, but it wasn’t until 2010’s Expendables, that he was considering returning to the acting field.  While his appearance in The Expendables was brief, it was memorable.  He was given a much larger role in the second film.  After The Expendables 2 came out, his first lead role in nearly a decade was LionGate Studios’ The Last Stand in which he played a small-town sheriff.  It was a moderate success, but it was far from the smash hits that Schwarzenegger was used to having on a regular basis.  It wasn’t a bad effort.  Earlier this year, Schwarzenegger starred in the gritty action-thriller, Sabotage.

The film opens with a bang as D.E.A agent John Wharton and his team infiltrate a drug cartel’s hideout in search of a 10 million dollar payout.  After successfully eliminating the gang, the team decides to take their cut of the money.  After sneaking the money out through a drain, they discover that the money is gone.  After 6  months of being scrutinized by the D.E.A., Wharton and his rag-tag team of misfits are back in action only to find themselves targets of a mysterious assassin.  I kind of figured it would take Arnie a while to get back into the swing of things.  While The Last Stand was surprisingly a decent action film, Sabotage is a mixed bag.  Don’t get me wrong, I love gritty action movies, and Sabotage has plenty of grit.  There’s just a few problems here.  Okay, there’s more than a few problems.

Let’s talk about the characters:  There’s not one person here who’s likable.  Even Arnold’s character, John, comes across as a bit of a dirtbag.  The way these characters interact with each other is like putting a bunch of schoolyard bullies in a room together.  It’s not pretty.  These characters are supposed to be professional undercover D.E.A agents.  So, why don’t they act like it?  The performances by the actors are fine, particularly from Sam Worthington, but it doesn’t matter because the characters are poorly written.  Because of that, Sabotage inadvertently telegraphs who the problem child is a mile away.  This is one of those movies that is totally predictable, and you pretty much know who is responsible for the chaos almost right from the get-go.  That should never happen in a movie like this.  Arnold’s character suffers from having the cliche of losing his family to a violent gang in his past, so he’s pretty grumpy throughout the whole thing.

The action in Sabotage is pretty intense, but it suffers from being too excessive.  Were they trying to make an action movie or a horror movie here?  There’s plenty of gunfights and butt-kicking to be had, but Sabotage is gory.  It really is.  This is probably the goriest Schwarzenegger film I’ve ever seen.  I’m a gore-hound, so stuff like this doesn’t really bother me, but I think they went WAY overboard with it.  If David Ayer was trying to go for realism, he failed miserably.  It’s like the filmmakers wanted to see how far they could push the envelope.  They certainly pushed pretty hard.  I think that’s also a complement because it’s actually nice to see a movie not shy away from brutal violence like I’ve seen before.  Also, the film moves at a fairly brisk pace, so it doesn’t slow down a whole lot.  It’s also nice to see Sam Worthington do a movie that’s a little more hardcore than what I’ve seen him in.  I like Worthington as an actor, I really do.  I think he’s honest in what he does.  Is he the greatest actor?  No, but he’s a lot of fun to watch.  Seeing him take on a role like this is refreshing, because he’s not the hero of the film.

I really like Arnold Schwarzenegger.  I really do.  I like the fact that he plays a human being in Sabotage and not a comic book-style superhero.  I think that his performance in this movie is one of his better ones, but that doesn’t make it a particularly good movie.  But the fact of the matter is, is that Arnold isn’t the draw that he used to be.  I’m not going to blame him for getting older, it happens to everybody, I just don’t think he can really headline an action movie like this anymore.  He’s clearly still in great shape, though, don’t get me wrong.  I just feel that his time is getting close to being done.  Schwarzenegger’s got a few more big movies on the way: Terminator: Genisys, Triplets(sequel to Twins), and a new Conan movie is in the works.  If Arnold decided to to retire after doing The Legend of Conan, it would be awesome, actually, seeing as how he would bring his career full circle.  It was Conan that put Schwarzegger on the map, and Conan could be his last film.  I think that would wrap up an amazing career.  But that’s just speculation on my part.  As far as Sabotage goes, I may have to watch it again, but I can’t honestly recommend this movie unless you are a major fan of Arnie’s and of brutally violent films.  Personally, I enjoyed it despite its problems, and I don’t think it Sabotaged Arnold’s career(Ha, I’m so funny.).  I’m giving this one a 7/10.

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Pompeii

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Released: February 2014

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

Run Time: 105 Minutes

Rated: PG-13

Cast:
Kit Harington: Milo
Kiefer Sutherland: Corvus
Carrie-Anne Moss: Aurelia
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje: Atticus
Jared Harris: Severus

I love gladiator movies like Spartacus, Ben-Hur, and well……..Gladiator.  I also like disaster movies such as Dante’s Peak, Volcano, and 2012.  So, what happens when you combine the two?  You get Pompeii.  This is not the first piece of fiction dealing with the city.  Some books and movies were made specifically about Pompeii.  The most famous of which is The Last Days of Pompeii.  That one started out as a book and was adapted for film multiple times.  Director Paul W.S. Anderson was given the opportunity to create a film based around the events of the Mount Vesuvius eruption of 79 AD.  Historically, this particular eruption was one of the most destructive and catastrophic disasters in European history.  Trying to create a movie around such an event is tricky, since anyone familiar with history already knows the outcome.  So, making a movie specifically about Pompeii wasn’t really in the cards.  So, they came up with a sort of Gladiator-style spectacle and story that led up to the eruption.  The result is a movie that suffers an identity crisis.  Is it trying to be a gladiator epic or a disaster movie?

Pompeii opens in 62 AD as a squad of Roman soldiers led by general Corvus put down a Celtic rebellion in Britannia.  Only one survived: Milo.  Sold into slavery as a child, Milo grows up to become a vicious gladiator.  Later, he’s brought to Pompeii with other gladiators to fight for the entertainment of now-Roman Senator Corvus, who has arrived to see if the city is worth investing in.  Milo captures the eye of Cassia, the daughter of Pompeii’s mayor, Severus.  Little does Milo know that Corvus has also taken an interest in Cassia.  At this point, the story just serves to move the film from one action set-piece to another, up to and including the volcanic eruption.  It’s really hard to tell what kind of movie Pompeii wanted to be.  Half of the movie wants to be a gladiator epic, and the other half: a disaster movie.  The combination of the two doesn’t quite work as well as Anderson hoped, especially in its 105 minute run time.  It doesn’t really leave room for character development, just lots of action.  Paul W.S. Anderson knows his way around an action movie, and he doesn’t really disappoint here.  I’ll get to that a little later.

So, what went wrong?  First of all, let’s talk about the cast.  Kit Harington of Game of Thrones fame lands the lead role of Milo The Gladiator.  It seems he’s brought his grumpiness and bad temperament from Game of Thrones with him.  He’s not bad, he’s certainly can handle a sword or two.  He’s just not given enough room to develop as a hero.  Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje plays Atticus, the gladiator who gets to fight one more time before becoming a free man.  I can see Agbaje doing that.  I can even see Carrie-Anne Moss as Roman nobility.  What I can’t see is Kiefer Sutherland as Corvus.  Don’t get me wrong, Kiefer Sutherland is a fantastic actor, rivaling his own father at times.  He was terribly miscast here.  Looking at his filmography, he’s not cut out to play a corrupt Roman leader.  He’s the mustache-twirling villain of the film.  Honestly, he comes off across as a bit cartoon-ish.  I don’t know if it’s because he’s out of his depth, or the character was so poorly written, but Corvus is not a good villain.

The action is where the film shines.  We’ve got some good sword fights and potential gladiator epicness, but it isn’t fully realized.  We do get to see what’s going on, most of the time.  We can thank Paul W.S. Anderson not overusing the shaky-cam technique.  The real spectacle of Pompeii begins when Vesuvius erupts.  Wow.  The views of the volcano, even before it erupts are spectacular.  We do get to see a rare glimpse inside the volcano when it starts to act up.  I honestly haven’t really seen that in a volcano movie before.  When it explodes, all hell breaks loose, and that’s where the movie kicks into high gear.  The visual effects are simply astounding.

For those of you who don’t know, Pompeii was destroyed in a cataclysmic eruption in 79 AD.  The reason we know for sure that the volcano erupted came from the writings of Pliny The Younger, who was a Roman magistrate and author.  He actually witnessed the eruption 22 miles away from the mountain.  Okay, Spoiler Alert: The volcano erupted and people died.  Not well, either.  They suffocated, burned and basically everything in between during the eruption.  The way the volcano erupted basically annihilated everything in its path, covering everything in mud and ash.  We have pictures of plaster-shaped people who were buried.  The people who were killed left impressions in the ash.  We learned that when the city was rediscovered in 1599.  More of it was uncovered in 1748.  People of all ages were found to have been buried.  11,000 people died in Pompeii during those days, and 5,000 more in a nearby city at the same time.  So, the history surrounding Pompeii is actually very interesting.  Because of Pliny The Younger, we have a much greater understanding of what happened during those last few days.

When all is said and done, Pompeii isn’t a bad movie.  It really isn’t.  It’s a decent film that just failed to decide what it wanted to be when it grew up.  Kiefer Sutherland was laughable bad in this one and the rest of the cast just failed to really come together.  The story isn’t terrible, but it’s a mish-mash of better films.  As I said earlier, the film’s real bright spot comes when the volcano blows its top, and its a non-stop ride from there.  Pompeii doesn’t really bring anything new to the gladiator or disaster movie genres.  It’s just…there.  It’s still better than The Legend of Hercules, though.  But, I don’t think that’s really hard to do.  Pompeii is just mediocre.  7/10.