It’s a time-honoured Hollywood tradition that any moderately successful movie without true franchise potential be considered for a straight-to-video follow-up. Thus we have been blessed by such timeless treasures as Behind Enemy Lines II: Axis Of Evil and Jarhead 3: The Siege, not to mention one additional Hard Target, two _Air Bud_s and four successive _Bring It On_s. Shorn of stars and budget, such bargain-bin fillers were a staple of video rental stores, and it’s most definitely in the spirit of such releases that we find ourselves confronted with Escape Plan 2 — except for the fact that both star and theatrical release somehow remain intact.
Mikael Håfström’s 2013 original was a daft but enjoyable break-out thriller, capitalising on the interplay between Sylvester Stallone and a recently returned Arnold Schwarzenegger, as charismatic con Emil Rottmayer. Backed up by few surprises but some interesting escapology, the pair managed to carry the film well enough, pulling in a modest amount in the US, but cleaning up overseas, particularly in Asian markets. It’s almost certainly due to this latter fact that this sequel not only exists, but has dragged Stallone along for the ride. In a bid to lock up the Chinese box office, Sly takes a deliberate back seat this time, allowing Sino singer, model and action star Xiaoming Huang (Ip Man 2) to take centre stage as Breslin’s star pupil, incarcerated in high-tech prison Hades for reasons that don’t matter nearly enough to recount.
Both Stallone and his line-up of solid supporting actors are wasted.
While Escape Plan’s Tomb was an advanced yet believable pokey, Hades is — with no discernible explanation — seemingly transplanted from 50 years in the future. Filled with Star Trek-inspired force fields, neon strip lighting and clunky robot medics, the pseudo sci-fi facility is watched over by Galileo, an experimental AI that forces inmates to face each other in gladiatorial combat, for the reward of two hours in Sanctuary — the prison’s equivalent of a feng shui rec room.
For all its high-tech infrastructure, the ‘inescapable’ prison proves woefully uninspired, requiring little in the way of a master plan to defeat — almost as if the writer (a returning Miles Chapman) has lost interest entirely. Both Stallone and his line-up of solid supporting actors (including Titus Welliver, Dave Bautista and The Expanse’s Wes Chatham) are wasted, forced to spout trite nonsense interspersed with fortune cookie wisdom (“Use what you see to map what you can’t see”). Meanwhile, the anaemic action scenes (directed by a seemingly unconscious Steven C. Miller) are lined up with almost no concern for either narrative cohesion or excitement.
As a cynical overseas cash-grab this may well achieve its aim (Escape Plan 3: Devil’s Station is already in pre-production), but if you’re looking for something approaching entertainment, Timecop 2: The Berlin Decision has more to offer.