Escape Plan (2013): Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s First Co-Lead Outing Lands at 4.9/10

Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger share top billing for the first time in Escape Plan, a 2013 prison action thriller from Swedish director Mikael Håfström. The two men spent the 1980s and 1990s as rival kings of the action movie, and the pitch here is simple: put them in a cell together and see what happens. What happens is a film that grossed $137 million worldwide against a $54–70 million budget, drew mixed reviews, and lands at 4.9 of 10.

Trailer, via The Dollar Theater.

Ray Breslin and the Firm That Breaks Prisons

Stallone plays Ray Breslin, a former prosecutor who now runs Breslin-Clark, a security firm that tests supermax prisons from the inside. He poses as an inmate, studies the facility, finds the weak point, and walks out. The source material gives him a motive: his wife and child were murdered by an escaped convict he had successfully prosecuted. That is why he does the work, and it is the only fact about Breslin’s inner life the film bothers to supply.

His business partner is Lester Clark, played by Vincent D’Onofrio. The two take a multimillion-dollar deal from CIA operative Jessica Miller, played by Caitríona Balfe, to test a new prison built for disappeared persons. The condition is that Breslin and his team cannot know where the prison is. He agrees, which the film treats as a violation of his principles.

New Orleans, a Microchip, and a Man Named Anthony Portos

The setup goes wrong in New Orleans. Breslin lets himself be captured while posing as a mercenary under the alias Anthony Portos. His captors then cut a tracking microchip out of his arm, the one Miller’s people implanted, and drug him. His colleagues lose him.

On the flight, he watches a mercenary named Drake, played by Vinnie Jones, kill another captive. Breslin wakes up inside the prison. The warden is Willard Hobbes, played by Jim Caviezel, and he is not the warden who was supposed to release Breslin in an emergency. The secret evacuation code Miller gave him is useless.

Transparent Cells and a Rotating Block

The prison itself is the film’s one real idea. The cells have fully transparent walls. They rotate around various blocks. The guards watching the cells wear fully black masks and robes. It is a set built to look like nothing else in the subgenre.

Breslin’s first escape attempt teaches him he is aboard a massive prison ship. That is the reveal the movie has been holding, and it arrives without much fuss.

He also meets Emil Rottmayer, played by Schwarzenegger, who says he is a security expert for Victor Mannheim — described in the source as a faceless Robin Hood-type figure who steals from the wealthy. Breslin recruits Rottmayer to stage a breakout. Mannheim is the name that keeps the plot moving.

The Supporting Cast, Ranked by What They Get to Do

The film stacks its cast deep, and in this paper’s view the depth goes largely unused. Ranked by how much the script actually gives them:

1. Jim Caviezel as Willard Hobbes — the warden, and in this paper’s reading the only antagonist with a personality.
2. Vinnie Jones as Drake — the mercenary who kills a captive on the flight, and the film’s blunt instrument.
3. Sam Neill as Dr. Kyrie — a prison doctor, present but underused.
4. 50 Cent as Hush — a Breslin-Clark colleague, credited under his stage name Curtis Jackson.
5. Faran Tahir as Javed, Graham Beckel as Brims, Matt Gerald as Roag — inmates and guards with names and not much else.
6. Caitríona Balfe as Jessica Miller — the CIA operative who sends Breslin in.

Amy Ryan plays Abigail Ross, another member of Breslin’s team. Between Ryan and D’Onofrio, two of the better actors in the movie get no scene that tests them.

A Release Date, a Runtime, and a Pen Name

Escape Plan opened in the United States on October 18, 2013. It runs 115 minutes. It was written by Miles Chapman and Jason Keller, with Keller credited under the anagram pen name “Arnell Jesko.” It is the first installment of the Escape Plan film series, which tells you the $137 million was enough to justify more.

Here is the release frame:

The tagline is “No one breaks out alone.” The film seems to believe it. Breslin and Rottmayer stage the breakout together, and the pairing is the film’s whole commercial premise.

What the Pairing Actually Delivers

The meeting of Stallone and Schwarzenegger as co-leads is the part that holds up. The two men have an easy, unhurried rapport. Rottmayer gets the looser lines; Breslin gets the technical ones. Neither actor is asked to do anything he has not done before, and both seem content with that.

But the movie around them is a machine with too many parts. The transparent cells and the rotating blocks are a genuine piece of design. The prison ship is a genuine reveal. What the film does with both is run Breslin through a series of observations until he has enough information to act.

Caviezel’s Hobbes is the best thing in the movie. He plays the warden as a bureaucrat with a god complex, calm where the script wants menace, and the restraint makes him more unsettling than the guards in black masks ever manage.

The problem is that Escape Plan never decides what it is. It has the structure of a procedural, the casting of a reunion tour, and the third act of a heist film. Those are three different movies, and the direction feels steady and unremarkable across all of them.

The Score: 4.9 of 10

Escape Plan is not a bad time. It is a film with one strong visual idea, one strong performance, and a premise that writes its own ticket. It is also a film that spends its runtime explaining a prison and then leaves it behind, which is the least interesting thing it could have done with a prison that rotates.

The $137 million gross is real. So is the 49/100 Metacritic score, and so is the fact that this became a series. The first installment rests on the names above the title. Stallone and Schwarzenegger finally shared top billing. The film they chose was a decent B-movie wearing an A-movie cast.

2013 films · Arnold Schwarzenegger · Escape Plan · movie review · Prison Movies · Sylvester Stallone