(Escape Plan; USA 2013; Thriller del mistero; 115'; Produz.: EFF/Emmett/Furla Films/Summit Entertainment/Envision Entertainment Corporation/Atmosphere Entertainment MM/Boies/Schiller Film Group/Spiderwood Productions/Grosvenor Park Media/Swift Street Productions; Distribuz.: 01 Distribution)
Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone) - una delle principali autoritĂ mondiali nel campo della sicurezza delle strutture carcerarie - decide di accettare un ultimo incarico: evadere dallâultra-segreto e tecnologico penitenziario di ultimissima generazione, âThe Tombâ. Ingannato ed ingiustamente imprigionato, Breslin si trova cosĂŹ a dover coinvolgere un altro detenuto, Emil Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger), per mettere in atto un audace piano di fuga, ai limiti dellâinverosimile, per evadere dal piĂš sicuro ed inespugnabile carcere mai concepito e costruito dallâuomo.
SYNOPSIS:
When a structural-security authority finds himself incarcerated in a prison he designed, he has to put his skills to escape and find out who framed him.
Ray Breslin is the world's foremost authority on structural security. After analyzing every high security prison and learning a vast array of survival skills so he can design escape-proof prisons, his skills are put to the test. He's framed and incarcerated in a master prison he designed himself. He needs to escape and find the person who put him behind bars.
Commento critico (a cura di ANDREW BAKER, www.variety.com)
Considering the degree to which slavish fan service has come to dominate the development process for genre pics, itâs amazing that no one managed to load â80s action gods Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger into a true co-starring vehicle until now. With that in mind, the highest compliment one can pay âEscape Planâ is that this prison-break actioner plays much like the kind of film the two might have made in their heyday, albeit with far more scripted downtime for its sexagenarian stars. Mercifully free of tongue-in-cheek meta-humor, âEscape Planâ is a likably lunkheaded meat-and-potatoes brawler that never pretends to be more sophisticated than it is, and though âExpendablesâ-level B.O. numbers will be out of reach, genre fans and international auds should lap it up.
Looking as slablike as ever, Stallone stars as Ray Breslin, a former lawyer who literally wrote the book on breaking out of prison (paperback copies of
his august tome âCompromising Correctional Institutional Securityâ appear to be popular bedside reading). Employed by an ill-defined agency, Breslin works freelance for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, identifying firsthand the weak spots of penitentiaries by entering them as an undercover inmate and escaping.
Fresh off a nicely staged jailbreak in Colorado, Breslin is hired by a CIA operative for double his usual pay to infiltrate a new, privately funded black-site facility intended to house âthe worst of the worst.â Abandoning his usual safety protocols for the gig, Breslin is promptly double-crossed and left to rot in an impressively designed next-gen dungeon straight out of âDemolition Man,â with beehives of glass cells and jackbooted guards wearing black Guy Fawkes masks.
To put it delicately, Stallone has never been the type of actor who radiates deep analytical contemplation, and buying him as a sort of juiced-up MacGyver with encyclopedic knowledge of metallurgy, structural engineering
and physical oceanography requires considerable indulgence. Fortunately, heâs soon joined by Schwarzenegger as a fellow inmate, the gloriously monikered Emil Rottmayer, who cozies up to Breslin with suspicious openness.
While Stalloneâs deadpan tough-guy routine reaches such somnolent levels that a scene in which heâs tortured with sleep deprivation causes little discernible change in his demeanor, Schwarzenegger hasnât been this alive onscreen in years. Gifted with all the filmâs best one-liners (âYou hit like a vegetarianâ being the standout) and finally allowed to speak his native German onscreen, the former governor is all wild eyes and mischievous grins. His Rottmayer quickly becomes Breslinâs accomplice, and the two sketch out an impossible-yet-not-totally-absurd plot under the watchful eye of sadistic prison warden/amateur lepidopterist Hobbes (an icy Jim Caviezel).
By the standards of both starsâ respective filmographies, âEscape Planâ reps a relatively low-key iteration of their trademark skull-crackery; fights are limited to punches and judo holds,
with nary a throat-ripping or eye-gouging to be seen, and it isnât until the filmâs final third that our heroes even wield a gun. And considering the Republican political affiliations of its stars â not to mention the Reaganite jingoism of â80s actioners in general â the pic exhibits a surprisingly liberal bent: Corporatized prisons, extraordinary rendition, waterboarding and Blackwater are unambiguously decried, while a gang of Arab Muslims prove to be key allies.
Yet grand statements are hardly part of director Mikael Hafstromâs m.o., and after an occasionally dull middle third â including a needless bit of backstory for Breslin that Stallone almost seems embarrassed to relate â the film comes alive for the climactic jailbreak, as Schwarzenegger finally gets to go full âCommandoâ with a ludicrously oversized machine gun.
Hafstrom lavishes considerable care on the filmâs production design and in-camera effects, sometimes to the detriment of its overall look, which
can tend toward muddiness. Fight choreography breaks no new ground, but itâs all efficiently constructed, and Alex Heffesâ numbskull score fits the proceedings to a tee. Supporting players Vincent DâOnofrio and Vinnie Jones slip into their typical miens with minimal fuss, while Curtis â50 Centâ Jackson is hysterically miscast as a bespectacled computer expert.
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Nota: Si ringraziano 01 Distribution e l'Ufficio Stampa Guidi-Locurcio