‘Escape Plan’ is a Taut Thriller Full of Unpredictable Twists and Turns, We Can’t Say With a Straight Face

There is a whole category of movies that are meant to be watched on basic cable while doing other things. These  flicks are the same ones you find available on flights over two hours and packaged with similar DVD's in the grocery check-out. This is Escape Plan.

Much like Lone Wolf McQuade, Maximum Overdrive, and Kurt Russell's entire catalog between the years 1979 and 1989, Escape Plan is the type of flick you watch hungover, stoned off your balls (literal or figurative), in a pile of Taco Bell wrappers and Cheeto crumbs, in your own living room.

Its premise is 1980s passable -- an expert in prison escape, played by Sylvester Stallone, gets double-crossed and stuck in a supposedly inescapable prison that was made supposedly inescapable by his own recommendations. Crazy, right? His only ally on the inside is an elderly version of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Things get pretty wacky as the duo come up with a blueprint for their liberation...an, um, plan for their...um...look: they come up with an escape plan. And then shit gets real.

What follows is a strictly-by-the-numbers thriller peppered with the middle-school humor that we've all come to  expect and love. I don't want to ruin too much of the rest of the plot except to say that you know exactly where it's going and exactly how it ends. To boot, the film's punchline is 'Boom' and it involves machine guns.

All told, if you've got money to burn, there are worse ways to spend a weekend evening at the moving pictures. Boom.