Escape Plan - 3 smiles

“Escape Plan,” with Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger in roles they could have easily done 20 years ago, is a solid B action movie meant to be taken on its own terms. There are no wink-wink situations about two old guys making a come back. And it succeeds in doing something difficult: it provides a creative script that allows each to play to his strengths. That is, Schwarznegger gets to play the comedian (overacting and all) and Stallone focuses on drama. Stallone plays Ray, a security expert whose job is to figure out the weaknesses of maximum-security prisons from the inside. He goes in, undercover, and then breaks out. Simple enough, but things get complicated when he takes a job testing a CIA prison, from which, he realizes, there’s no escape. It takes about a half an hour before Schwarznegger shows up, playing a German anarchist stuck in the CIA prison. He’s Stallone’s comic relief. Soon the two are studying prison patterns and plotting their escape. Our heroes are pitted against a coldly effective Jim Caviezel as the sadistic warden.

The cast is first rate down the line, with Vincent D’Onofrio as Ray’s germ-a-phobic business partner, Amy Ryan as Ray’s friend on the outside and Sam Neill lending the weight of his presence to a small role as the prison doctor. Director Mikael Hafstrom strikes a good tonal balance that allows him to take advantage of lighter moments without losing anything in dramatic intensity. “Escape Plan” is pure escapist fare, a fun way to spend an afternoon with some ‘old’ friends. 10/30/13