What's Next On My List? Escape Plan The Extractors

Welcome to the eight installment of #StalloneMonth, which I have to say, is my favorite time of the year! In February we look over the filmography of this wonderful actor, Sylvester Stallone, three-four movies at a time. This year I tried to keep a "prison" theme. So let us jump right into it!

Escape Plan The Extractors (2019)

Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone) gets involved in a missing person's case, as the abductor is the son of his former partner, seeking revenge for his father's death. Breslin had him killed, after he betrayed him. Breslin loses his girlfriend to the altercation, but results in helping a man free his girlfriend and her party that was abducted by the same man to control a very rich man.

This is the hardest review to write because I did not enjoy the movie, but as I said in a previous entry, I am relearning my opinion on movies. Yes, many are not home runs, yet, there is a crew behind it that has tried to do their best. A lot of people involved in the project are not to be blamed if the script is not good. Now, I have been reading a lot of trivia as of late, and the quality of a movie can be ascertained based on how much behind the scenes information is shared on it. Now, I have found out that this movies began filming before Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018) (read review here!) was released. And quite frankly, despite having scenes at a prison, more precisely the historic Ohio Reformatory prison, where The Shawshank Redemption (1994) was filmed, but there was no interesting plan to infiltrate the prison, it was not even really functioning, and killing the villain was ridiculously easy. This movie did have more Stallone, which is my main issue with the second film, and overall the title is not "escape prison", but once again, the film had several new characters that fail to establish any contact with the viewer and I did not care for their story. Even Breslin's girlfriend, Abigail (Jaime King) had no more than six or seven scenes between two films with her partner, and thus failed in making us care. 

So watch it? I think you can skip it. I, as a devoted fan of Stallone will watch everything, and I can tell you that this was rushed unfortunately. The idea of a larger organization bent on taking down Breslin was quite intriguing, but casting decisions as well as some foolish revenge scheme overrode the initial ideas of this trilogy, if it is a trilogy. It will be interesting to see if there are going to be any additional movies in the series. But if I just get to see Stallone and Dave Bautista appear in the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie, then I am good to go!

That will have to do for this years #StalloneMonth. I just love watching his movies, and sharing them with you all. Even the ones that are not as impactful or of tha same caliber as some award winners are just good entertainment. And well, I'll do anything to have some Sly time in my yearly schedule.

Until the next item on my list!

What's Next On My List? Escape Plan 2: Hades

Welcome to the eight installment of #StalloneMonth, which I have to say, is my favorite time of the year! In February we look over the filmography of this wonderful actor, Sylvester Stallone, three-four movies at a time. This year I tried to keep a "prison" theme. So let us jump right into it!

Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018)

Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone)'s team is imprisoned in a super facility meant to defeat even the best of prison makers and escape artists, such as Breslin himself. The team plans to get out both the latter's protégé Shu (Xiaoming Huang), and to finally find out who has been trying to best Breslin over the years. 

I decided to use this poster, because the American one features Stallone and Dave Bautista on it, without any of the other actors, despite the fact that Stallone isn't a leading man, not really at least. And as much as I love Bautista, he is barely in it, so much so, that despite showing up for the final fight, I do not really remember what he did. For the longest time I thought he was gonna betray Breslin, and I am uncertain if that is what the writers were going for. And coming back to the poster, the biggest issue with this movie is in fact NOT ENOUGH STALLONE. The movie did absolutely nothing to make me like the main character, and that is not on actor Xiaoming Huang, as he clearly played the character as he was told to play. And we have seen hundreds of these kinds of movies, where the protagonist learns his lessons and we grow along with them, we root for them, but poor protagonist here did not seem to learn a single lesson. He just understood how his enemy was thinking and did the opposite long enough to escape. Really, until Stallone joins the game I was very unimpressed, unfortunately, not to mention that Jesse Metcalfe never looked better, and the movie did not make the best use of him either. This was a great cast, it is such a shame. Is the story the same as the first one? Sure. But the great cast does not compare to the banter between Stallone and Schwarzenegger. (I reviewed that movie last year, click here to read it!)

Watch it? You know, it is hard for me to be hard on bad movies too. This is not really a memorable film, and it is too bad, because with a couple more twists it could have been far more entertaining than the original one. The cast and the idea was there, that is for sure. We still have one more movie in the prison theme, so stay tuned for next week!

Until my next review in #StalloneMonth!

What's Next On My List? Lock Up

Welcome to the eight installment of #StalloneMonth, which I have to say, is my favorite time of the year! In February we look over the filmography of this wonderful actor, Sylvester Stallone, three-four movies at a time. This year I tried to keep a "prison" theme. So let us jump right into it!

Lock Up (1989)

Frank (Sylvester Stallone) is an inmate that gets transferred to a prison run by Warden Drumgoole (Donald Sutherland), who has a personal vendetta against him. With six months left on his sentence, Drumgoole is determined to make Frank's life a living hell, furthermore, he tries to frame him for a larger crime, to ensure he spends his life in prison.

I did not know what to expect with this movie. While watching it I just felt anger... it was probably the intent of the movie, but I felt like I have my stomach is in a knot the whole time, and there was no real way of letting off steam, not even in scenes from the movie that were not part of the Warden's revenge scheme, as you feel something awful coming just around the corner. But whether you have seen it already or not, I do recommend that you look up trivia because the making of this film is fascinating. First of all, they filmed in a real prison, while the inmates were there, many of them are in the backgrounds in scenes, and were paid for their work as extras. Actually, some of the production got locked-in during the filming when the inmate count numbers didn't add up at the end of the day. Second, Sylvester Stallone was tackled repeatedly by some of the real-life prison's penitentiary extras during the filming of a football game that they played outside. The scenes themselves look tiring, I have no idea how long they shot those scenes out in the mud, but actually getting tackled is real dedication to the craft. Another wonderful piece of trivia is the following, according to imdb: "The movie was very well received in central Europe during the last echoes of communist oppression. The movie's title in Hungarian is: In the Prison of Revenge." I rarely talk about the background or the reception of movies, but last year I managed to watch a total of 365 movies, and I ended up reading a lot of trivia and I begun to have a new kind of appreciations for the making of movies. Even the ones that are not the best... I heard someone talk in a podcast about how nobody sets out to make a bad movie, and that is something we often forget and just think about a paycheck. However, even if this movie did not make my top 10 favorite Stallone films, it is still quite incredible in its making. So, final point, as you will see from the reviews I have lined up this year, this is not the only prison themed movie that Stallone starred in, one of them being the fantastic Tango & Cash, which was released in the same year! (Click here to read my review of it!)

So watch it? I think it is much better than some of the reviews and ratings suggest. I do not think it is re-watchable, purely because of the continuous tension in the film. Some like that feeling in their stomach, but for me personally this was enough once. I do with that justice would prevail in real life the way it does in movies. But it is sure satisfying when Frank finally defeats the warden!

Until the next Stallone movie on my list!