Escape Plan - 2013

"Escape Plan" - 2013
Dir. by Mikael Hafstrom - 1 hr. 55 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollfield

First off, Sylvester Stallone has a really lumpy face.  That's actually an asset in films like this, but it stood out upon watching "Escape Plan," and I thought I'd get that out of the way.  Also of note, "Escape Plan" isn't going to go down in the top handful of films that either Stallone or co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger has done, but at the same time, it wasn't "Wild Hogs" or "Space Cowboys," with constant jokes about how old the stars are, and their assortments of balms and ointments.  Instead, this is a straight-up thriller, basically physically solving a seemingly unsolvable puzzle, and makes good use of the people involved, and if you're down with this sort of thing, you won't regret watching it.

Ray Breslin (Stallone) make a living escaping from prisons.  Like, super max security prisons, even from solitary confinement.  He owns a security consulting firm built around selling his particular skill-set to those who would need it, abetted by his "techno-thug," Hush (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson), resident female skeptic, Abigail (Amy Ryan), and business specialist, Lester Clark (Vincent D'Onofrio).  A woman comes in with a dodgy offer, claiming to be from the C.I.A., but with impossible and unfriendly circumstances, and yet with a sufficiently attractive fistful of dollars.  So a day later, Ray is abducted and thrown into a very daunting and harsh prison.  Upon landing in the prison, Emil (Schwarzenegger) slowly befriends Ray, and they work together to first figure out where the hell they are, and then to find a way out of where they are.

I joked ahead of time that I was going to be sorely disappointed if there weren't any explosions here, and that nearly happened.  "Escape Plan" relies a lot more heavily on tension, and personal physical violence (and a pressing system) than pyrotechnics.  And even though both Stallone and Schwarzenegger are clearly still in pretty good shape, it's not a shirtless kind of movie, nor a wall-to-wall action kind of movie.  This is about solving a puzzle when there seemingly aren't any clues to start with, and surviving the circumstances.  While I found the set-up interesting (at least interesting enough to catch the movie in the first place), I can't say that the film gives you a chance to solve things for yourself.  Honestly, the solutions are too complicated to do that, but when Ray breaks out of the first prison (to show you that he's really good at this, instead of just telling you that and hoping you'll take their word for it), I think viewers will find themselves more amazed that this character can make something out of nearly nothing than seeing the puzzle and having the character beat them to a solution.

The suspense of the bigger job that Ray is hired for is enough to carry the movie.  Although both stars bust off a couple of good one-liners along the way, this is also not the kind of free-wheeling, blowing up everything while caring not even a little bit kind of film.  I bring this up because a big part of why someone would want to go see "Escape Plan" is also the same reason that the two "Expendables" movies have done well - nostalgia.  And this film is not like a lost production from the 1980s.  To everyone's credit, they are not just trying to repackage an old product and pass it off as being fresh; they've made a movie where the main characters are older because they are, and they're not trying to pretend they're not.  "Escape Plan" also doesn't feel like the sort of movie that could have starred anyone.  If it were Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson here, you might question if either of them were really smart enough to be an escape artist, specializing in impossible situations (no insult to either, but neither man has made a career playing brilliant men to date).  The main annoyance I had was that the people who had weird quirks were immediately obviously bad guys (because they had quirks instead of death glares), but I can't get too mad about it.  This is not a stage production of "Hamlet."

On the whole, I was glad that I caught "Escape Plan," and especially on a big screen.  It's not going to blow anyone's mind, it's probably not going to be in line for any year-end awards.  But it's intended to be a couple of hours of entertainment, preferably for people who have enjoyed Stallone's and Schwarzenegger's work over the years, and who don't feel the need to nitpick things to death.  I mean, it's Rambo and the Terminator side-by-side, and that's pretty cool.  I can't imagine needing to watch it again, but there are always colds and viruses floating around, and oddball movies on cable all around the clock.

2 / 5 - Theatre

Diggstown - 1992

"Diggstown" - 1992
Dir. by Michael Ritchie - 1 hr. 38 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

"Diggstown" is one of only two movies I've ever been to where the audience spontaneously applauded at the end of the film (the other being "Karate Kid").  It wasn't a special screening, it was just a random showing in a suburban multiplex way back when.  It's not that this is an Oscar candidate, but the ending was just so satisfying.  But it's been a while, and the question is whether time has been kind to this film.

Gabriel Cane (James Woods) is a conman, and when we're introduced to him, he's helping another inmate escape from a county prison in Georgia.  He's about a week away from having served his time, but already has another big con brewing.  The target is Diggstown, a boxing-obessed small town (the town being named after a legendary boxer who lives there, Charles Macom Diggs), and more specifically, the man who runs the town, John Gillon (Bruce Dern).  Gabriel's partner, Fitz (Oliver Platt), sets the hook by hustling the locals and agreeing to a bet that seems undo-able: one boxer defeating ten men in one day.

"Diggstown" straddles an interesting line: it's half swindle, half sports movie.  Most sports movies are obsessed with underdogs fighting against long odds, and if the idea of fixing contests ever comes up, it's viewed in almost taboo terms.  The one thing that sports fans will not abide is the notion that what they're watching is anything but a fair contest.  Here, fight fixing (albeit not on a huge, televised stage) is acknowledged, expected, and not entirely condemned.  What this plot hinges on is not whether or not Honey Roy Palmer (Louis Gossett, Jr.) can defeat ten Diggstown men, but whether or not John Gillon or Gabriel Cane is better at fixing fights.  This is all upfront in the story, and we're being asked to root for someone who undermines the spirit of competition.

This dynamic works for a number of reasons.  First, James Woods does a good job of mixing his blatant manipulations with oily charm.  Also, his character is portrayed as having some sort of morals - a point of contention between Cane and Palmer is that Cane threw in the towel in a previous cash boxing match.  Furthermore, there's a early scene in the prison between Cane and Wolf (Randall "Tex" Cobb) that hammers home that Cane is an ethical employer; even though Wolf is in the prison infirmary due to losing a prison fight which serves as a cover for the aforementioned prisoner escape organized by Cane, he's still grateful for the opportunity to make some real money, an opportunity no one else had afforded him.  Successfully juxtaposed against Woods' character is Bruce Dern's.  Dern's John Gillon is a monster parading as a southern gentleman; he swindled the entire town out of their possessions by fixing Diggs' last fight (that's a story on its own), and will stop at literally nothing in order to keep it.  There's nothing likable about Gillon, which is both great acting and necessary in order to get an audience behind someone who is also a criminal.

Once "Diggstown" turns into a sports film (all ten fights are represented in the film), both Cane and Gillon keep upping the odds, until everything's on the line.  Director Michael Ritchie doesn't offer much in the way of visual flair (this could pass for a TV movie if you didn't know better); you won't find much in the way of excessive editing, special effects, or abuse of slow-motion here.  But he does pay attention to details.  There are at least a couple of things that seem like odd things to focus on early in the film, if you think about it at all, but end up playing into finish.  The one that's not a massive spoiler, and might come off as a minor plot point, is over Gabriel Cane's not wearing any socks.  It shows that Cane is willing to get the details right in order to play a character that Gillon and company would despise and instinctively underestimate - it's a douchey big-city high-roller thing, and would make Cane an irresistible target to small-town Gillon.  In a later scene, right before someone knocks at the door, Cane is shown tending to the blisters he has on his feet, since he normally does wear socks.  It's so minor, Cane could have been doing literally anything in his room, but the details add up over the course of the movie.

And that ending.  I'm not going to ruin it, but like the detail about Cane's socks, the big developments at the end are call-backs to things that have already been established in the film.  There's no magic development that falls out of thin air - thinking back, you can see exactly where the twists have come from.  It's rock-solid storytelling, and takes "Diggstown" to a decent film with a bunch of actors who would go on to bigger things (both Heather Graham and Jim Caviezel have roles, too) into a pretty darned good movie.  Sure, when you see the boxers with their shirts off, you're going to be very aware that this is a film from a different era, and visually it's nothing special, but a truly good ending is something to value and appreciate.

3.5 / 5 - TV