Movie Review: Escape Plan 2 Hades

Escape Plan 2 Hades (2018) 

Directed by Steven C. Miller

Written by Miles Chapman 

Starring Sylvester Stallone, Jesse Metcalf, Dave Bautista, Curtis Jackson

Release Date June 29th, 2018

Published June 29th, 2018 

I have seen amateur movies on YouTube, shot on an IPhone, that have better special effects than the cheeseball fluff featured in the new movie Escape Plan 2: Hades. This Sylvester Stallone starring sequel to the not-so-great to begin with, 2013 feature, Escape Plan starring Sly and Arnold Schwarzenegger, is among the worst movies of 2018. Bad special effects, inept direction, and abysmal editing make Escape Plan 2: Hades, nearly impossible to endure.

Once again Stallone is playing the character of security expert Ray Breslin. Here Ray and his team, including Jesse Metcalf, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and Jamie King, are hired to rescue hostages in a foreign country by developing an executing an ‘escape plan,’ get it? When the escape plan goes bad, Ray is forced to part ways with two members of his team, Jasper (Wes Chatham) and Shu (Xiaming Huong).

After firing Jasper, Ray let’s Shu take  a leave of absence and from there, Shu goes home to Thailand and reunites with his cousin, a tech millionaire. The cousin is wanted for his deus ex machina technology and when he’s kidnapped, Shu gets taken as well. The two end up in Hades, a state of the art prison, said to be inescapable. Naturally, when Ray finds out his buddy is missing he knows what he needs, as escape plan.

My plot description is intentionally snarky but the movie deserves it. Little care is taken by director Stephen C. Miller to make Escape Plan 2: Hades watchable so the film deserves my condescending descriptors. Miller’s direction is borderline haphazard, as if we’re lucky when he’s able to plant his camera in the direction of the actors. The editing is employed to try and hide the directorial and storytelling deficiencies, using quick cuts to try and distract from the bad production design and bored acting.

Sly Stallone looks as if he’s not getting enough sleep these days. His speech has always been a tad slow but here, words fall from his mouth as if pushed with great effort but little energy or life. He doesn’t appear to care much about what he’s saying and comes off as content to deliver the minimum effort needed for his check. Director Miller tries to cover for his star’s disinterest by giving newcomer Xiaming Huong most of the heavy lifting but his martial arts can’t overcome Miller’s inability to capture martial arts in a visually interesting fashion.

The fight scenes in Escape Plan 2: Hades are nearly as sloppy as the special effects are laughable. Huong appears to be a capable fighter but the slapdash camera work and quick cut editing do more to hide his abilities than to exploit them. There are times during major fight scenes where it was impossible to even locate the lead characters amid the chaos of the staging of these scenes.

The CGI of Escape Plan 2 is camp level bad. The effects rendering on something as routine as muzzle flair from a handgun are laughably inept with tiny fireballs that look like cotton candy popping out of a gun. A big explosion in the opening of the film looked like an effect from the legendary modern bad movie Birdemic: Shock and Terror. That film however, at the very least, was entertainingly terrible, Escape Plan 2: Hades is merely embarrassingly cringe inducing.

Just what the heck was Dave Bautista thinking when he accepted this role? Was he desperate to share the screen with Sly Stallone? Bautista is billed as the second star of Escape Plan, equal to Stallone and yet he’s barely in the movie. Bautista doesn’t even have a fight scene, content to just hold a gun in one scene and fire the gun while lightly jogging toward danger later in the movie. Bautista matches Stallone’s lack of energy with his own barely there performance.

Escape Plan 2: Hades was supposed to be released theatrically, nationwide this weekend but someone thought better of that idea. Instead, this abysmal effort will haunt the DVD and Blu Ray racks as of Friday, tempting Stallone completists and those who can be tricked into thinking Bautista is doing another Drax like character. Don’t be fooled, Bautista is barely there and Stallone, in a sense, is barely there as well in one of the worst movies of 2018.

Movie Review Righteous Kill

Righteous Kill (2008) 

Directed by Jon Avnet

Written by Russell Gewirtz 

Starring Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Curtis Jackson Carla Gugino

Release Date September 12th, 2008

Published September 11th, 2008

20 years ago people buzzed about the idea of Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino working together. 20 years ago, people would have lined up around the block and Oscar voters would salivate over the chance to vote for a Pacino-DeNiro teaming. 20 Years is a long time ago. DeNiro and Pacino did tease fans a little in their brief scenes together in Michael Mann's Heat but one could argue, with the length and breadth of that film. even with one scene together, they are barely in the same movie.

Thus Righteous Kill really is the first time Pacino and DeNiro, two of the finest actors of the last 50 years have teamed up. 20 since the teaming would have had relevance and buzz, Righteous Kill arrives after DeNiro has begun to lower his profile and work less and less and after Pacino has stumbled through a series of failures.

In Righteous Kill Robert DeNiro is Turk, a detective on the beat for years. Al Pacino is his partner Rooster and together they have done questionable things to get the bad guys. Lately, someone has been doing Turk and Rooster's job for them, hunting down and killing New York's worst of the worst. A series of murders where the killer leaves behind a poem referring to the crimes committed by the deceased.

Bodies pile up like cordwood and the evidence begins to point to a cop. In fact, the evidence seems to lead right to Turk. Rooster backs his partner, but even Turk's girlfriend (Carla Gugino) , a forensics expert, seems suspicious. John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg play a pair of fellow cops who also caught one of the poetry murders and come to suspect Turk.

I would love to tell you that director Jon Avnett takes this premise and uses it to keep you on the edge of your seat. I would love to be able to tell you that the plot is tight and lean and to the point but I can't. The fact is Righteous Kill is one of the sloppiest thrillers of the last decade. Though slightly better than Avnet's last teaming with Pacino, the abysmal 88 Minutes, Righteous Kill is as incomprehensible and ludicrous as any movie of the last decade.

Scenes pile up and go nowhere. Scenes of suspense and misdirection turn confusing and messy. Even as we are baffled by scenes that don't seem to make any sense, we still somehow are not the least bit surprised when the end arrives and the killer is revealed. Such is the botched effort of Righteous Kill, it's not even confusing enough to engender suspense from its own muddled nature.

As bad as Righteous Kill is, I cannot deny being compelled, ever so briefly, by DeNiro and Pacino. These two veterans, even far from the tops of their game, are still so charismatic that their talent can shine through the morass of something as awful and convoluted as this. As the film devolves and the two begin stagey speeches that go nowhere, you can't help admire the skill and commitment of these two legends.

Righteous Kill is a sloppy, slipshod effort that tries and fails to capitalize on the presence of two exceptional actors. It goes to show that no matter how good the actor, no one can overcome bad direction, bad plotting and bad editing. Really, Righteous Kill is just bad everything. Even bad DeNiro and Pacino who need to be called out for indulging such an incomprehensible mess.

Movie Review Get Rich or Die Tryin'

Get Rich or Die Trying (2005) 

Directed by Jim Sheridan 

Written by Terrence Winter 

Starring 50 Cent, Terrence Howard, Joy Bryant, Bill Duke, Viola Davis 

Release Date November 9th, 2005

Published November 8th, 2005 

Right off the bat I should say that I am not a big fan of rapper 50 Cent. I enjoyed his breakthrough hit "In Da Club" despite it's subsequent ubiquity in every nightclub in the country. His follow ups have been in ever declining quality since. I have a great deal of respect for his rise from a drug dealer on the streets to a millionaire superstar and the tenacity and determination it must have taken to survive being shot nine times.

With that said, his film debut Get Rich Or Die Tryin' reminds me of his most recent CD's. Irrelevant, mainstream ego polishing that only intends to burnish the image of an already rich and successful superstar. If the film were more entertaining you could forgive that, but as it is Get Rich Or Die Tryin' is simply an exercise in vanity and finance.

In Get Rich or Die Tryin' 50 Cent plays a composite character version of his real self, Marcus aka Black Caesar, his rap nickname. Marcus grew up on the streets of Brooklyn, New York, the son of a drug dealing single mother who was murdered when he was 12 years old in a turf war. Young Marcus soon joins the family business slinging cocaine on street corners, eventually earning himself a place in a drug syndicate headed up by Levar (Bill Duke) and his second in command, Majestic (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje), both of whom knew his mother.

Given his own territory and crew, including his childhood friends Antwan (Ashley Waters) and Keryl (Omar Benson Miller) and a newcomer named Justice (Tory Kittles), Marcus quickly becomes a big earner and a bigger target. Marcus is the target of not only cops but other gangs and even members of his own syndicate. A rivalry with Colombian dealers is a particularly dangerous situation that nearly takes the life of one of the members of his crew.

Eventually, as happens to most small time dealers, Marcus gets picked up by the cops and goes to prison. While in the joint he meets Bama (Terrence Howard), who saves his life during a knife fight. Bama encourages Marcus's life's dream to become a rapper and when the two are released Bama becomes the manager of Marcus' new career. This new career path includes leaving behind the syndicate much to the chagrin of Majestic who becomes a dangerous enemy.

Along the way, before he went to prison, Marcus falls for the beautiful Charlene (Joy Bryant). The two had been close friends as kids before she was sent away to live with relatives at a young age. Marcus sees Charlene on the street one day and the attraction is fully renewed. The two soon have a child on the way, yet another reason for Marcus to want to put his dangerous past behind him.

Directed by the venerable Irish director Jim Sheridan, Get Rich Or Die Tryin' tells Marcus' story from his first person perspective. The movie is about Marcus and is only vaguely an allegory for the struggle of the average inner city kid. Sheridan has some big ideas he wants to express and points he wants to make about poverty and struggle but his subject is only vaguely interesting.

The life of Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson has certainly been dramatic: his mother's death, his becoming a drug dealer at the age of 12, his having been shot nine times and surviving to become a world wide superstar. That is dramatic stuff.  So why is the movie so subdued and slightly mundane? The fault lies with Jackson.  His performance is passive to the point of non-involvement. For a world renowned superstar Jackson is surprisingly lacking in charisma even when on the microphone rapping.

Jackson is hurt further by acting opposite the excellent Terrence Howard. Not only does Howard outshine Jackson in this film about Jackson's own life but Howard's performance earlier this year in Hustle and Flow showed him to be an even more exciting rapper than Jackson.

Director Jim Sheridan was attracted to the idea of telling this story because he found parallels between the crime and poverty of inner city America and the blood drenched streets of his Irish youth at the height of religious and political warfare involving the Irish Republican Army. The comparison is relatively fair in terms of the violence and death involved in the lives of both but will the audience for Get Rich Or Die Tryin' care or even be aware of the comparison?

The most appealing part of Get Rich Or Die Tryin' is the soundtrack made up entirely of 50 Cent's music from his CD of the same title-- above average work for 50 Cent's most recent career efforts. However, there is not nearly as much time spent recording raps as there are scenes of the marble mouthed rapper's garbled gangster dialogue. 50 Cent's voice may be a plus in his rap career but it does nothing for his acting career. What music there is is okay but not great and nothing to match 50 Cent's breakthrough single.

Comparisons to Eminem's rap bio-pic 8 Mile are inevitable and I agree with the consensus that 8 Mile is the better of the two. But Get Rich Or Die Tryin' pales in other comparisons as well. In terms of movies about rap and hip hop, the music of Hustle and Flow blows away anything in Get Rich Or Die Tryin'. As far as movies about the struggles of the inner city gangster, 2004's Never Die Alone is better in terms of gritty urban violence and Boyz In The Hood remains the most lasting and impactful story of inner city struggle.

The fact is that the story of Get Rich Or Die Tryin would never be told if it were not the life story of a multi-platinum rap superstar. The story is relatively mundane when put alongside films of similar inner city settings. The violence in Get Rich Or Die Tryin' is anti-climactic and aside from Marcus' being shot nine times, the violence has little if any emotional impact. In interviews about reenacting having been shot nine times 50 Cent has said that the scene was not hard emotionally and he acts it as if it weren't that difficult.

Get Rich Or Die Tryin' is supposedly controversial for its violence, but the only thing interesting about the violence in this film is the indifference of the characters toward that violence. I would like to believe that the blase attitude the characters take toward violence is a function of the characters having become inured to it from having grown up with it their entire lives. However, my impression was that that the attitude was more a result of 50 Cent's cyborg-like performance. No fear, excitement or pain registers on 50 Cent's face no matter what happens to him, even having nine bullets pumped into him.

For a more unique view of 50 Cent's life and an unauthorized one at that, take a look at the new documentary 50 Cent: Refuse 2 Die from New Line Home Video. The doc claims to tell the real story of 50 Cent, his family, and his rise to the top of the rap game. I can't speak to the accuracy of Refuse 2 Die but I can tell you that it is more interesting than the fictionalized, sentimentalized version of 50 Cent's life depicted in Get Rich Or Die Tryin'.