I did not expect that I'd like two over-the-hill action stars trying their hand at yet another action movie. Surprisingly, I liked it.
Sylvester Stallone played Ray Breslin, a guy who professionally breaks out of prisons to show their weaknesses to the prison officials. It's a heckuva way to earn a living, but it was lucrative. I certainly couldn't do it. He's still in prison at the end of the day.
He accepted a deal to attempt to break out of a new international prison that was off the grid and off-record. This was a prison that would be used to house the world's worst criminals. The federal government offered him $5M to attempt to break out of this prison. Unlike all the other prisons, Breslin and his team-- Abigail (Amy Ryan), Hush (50 Cent), and Lester Clark (Vincent D'Onofrio)-- didn't know where this prison was. In fact, they had next to no information about it. That wasn't a deal breaker because Breslin still had an extraction code and he was chipped for locating. Well, they removed his chip when they rounded him up, and his extraction code was useless in the prison.
He met a man named Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in the prison right away. Rottmayer curiously gravitated to Breslin which is something that doesn't easily happen behind bars. It would be the two of them versus the warden, Hobbes (Jim Caviezel), from then on out. They would need each other, a lot of cunning, and a lot of luck to escape the state-of-the-art escape-proof prison.
If there was one thing that I didn't really care for was Breslin's all-encompassing knowledge. He admitted that he was a lawyer before which takes a fair amount of knowledge and practice, but where did he learn astronomy, nautics, ship controls, ship layouts, metallurgy, morse code, and a lot of other things. He had the knowledge of ten guys plus physical fitness. I only forgave this exaggerated resume because I liked the movie. It was technical, it appealed to one's belief in justice and fairness, it was heist-movie like in the scheming, and there was just enough action. Oh yeah, it was pretty funny too. Arnie was gifted some good lines.
To be honest, if I didn't like Sly and Arnie, two guys who were THE action stars of my youth, I don't think I would've liked this movie as much. They had just enough clout to pull it off even though they were very much past their prime.
HBO Max.
