Escape Plan

Dear Alixandra Petrovich, Assistant Property Master, Second Unit,

The efficacy of the escape plan at the heart of Escape Plan hinges on an important choice made by one of the supporting characters, a prison doctor played by Sam Neill. We get a scene of him late at night, sitting alone at his desk, throwing back a shot of whiskey, peering with tired and troubled eyes at one of your props: an open book. When he closes the book (having come, we assume, to a difficult compromise), we a cut to a close-up of the cover. The title of the tome he’s been contemplating? Medical Ethics.

This says pretty much everything you need to know about this Stallone/Schwarzenegger prison-break shoot-em-up. It’s simple. Simple to the point of being stupid. Case in point: 50 Cent plays a computer hacker.

But it’s more than that. The one-liners are sub-puerile, the characters zero-dimensional, and the plot twists (identities revealed, traitors uncovered) feel like surprises the same way buying yourself a Christmas gift feels like a surprise; you may briefly forget that you ordered it, but when it arrives you know exactly what’s in the box.

Yes, Alixandra: Escape Plan is a bad movie. But there’s something endearing about its badness. Something refreshing about it, even. A self-awareness, maybe. A quality of nostalgia. An admirable competence in its deficiency.

I called it stupid, but that’s not accurate. Any film brave enough to rest the framework of its story (all sorts of mumbo-jumbo about Stallone, an expert jail-breaker, being hired to test the security protocols of a brand-new state-of-the-art prison), and millions of dollars of explosions and helicopter stunts, on a simple prop like your Medical Ethics book is utterly convinced of its virtues.

Compare and contrast with the fifth Die Hard film, which came out earlier this year. The faux-Greengrassian shaky-cam madness and hyperactive editing style made it virtually unwatchable. Even Bruce Willis’ natural charm was deadened by how seriously the film took itself. Like all the recent comic book adaptations that eschew the four-color pop-artistry that inspired them in favor of dreary false-profundity, it wanted to be something more than it was.  

Escape Plan, though not quite a parody, is a bit more content to sit back and deliver on its easy promises. And, besides that vital book, your props play an important role throughout. Stallone, the master escapist, uses pens and eyeglasses and milk cartons to build all sorts of gadgets and increasingly goofy booby-traps. It seems almost like you guys shot the film chronologically, and, two-thirds of the way through, recognized the absurdity of it all and decided to abandon what little devotion to rationality remained.

And so, late in the film, as our heroes are (of course) racing against time, Arnie has one of his classic Arnie moments, which involves nothing more complicated than a look in his eyes and one of your props cradled in his arms. Seeing this scene with an audience fully invested in the nonsense made that five seconds almost worth the price of admission.

I guess that’s the trick to enjoying Escape Plan: accept that it isn’t interested in exploring ethics any further than showing it on the cover of a book, and just go along for the ride.

Sincerely,

Jared Young

Status: Standard Delivery (3/5)

L’affaire Dumont

Dear Jean-Patrick Joseph, Special Equipment Supplier,

For such a painstakingly specific and accurate film, you sure have a generic position. My mind races to guess what “special equipment” you supplied, exactly. I figure it was something shady, since it’s a well-known secret that the top suppliers in Montreal’s film industry are engaged in corrupt and monopolistic practices. But that assumption would be a blind (and possibly false) accusation, and a crime in and of itself. After watching L’affaire Dumont, that’s obviously the last thing in the world I want to do.

As the follow-up to his outstanding social services drama 10 ½, director Daniel “Podz” Grou tackles the true story of Michel Dumont – a man convicted of rape and sentenced to federal prison despite an alarming lack of evidence. Quebec heartthrob Marc-André Grondin completely transforms himself into the quiet, passive, and inarticulate grocery deliveryman who suffers from a series of injustices. His mulleted mop, bushy stash and shaded glasses may scream sex offender, but the film  slowly peels away those same stereotypical judgments that put him in prison.  Granted, that fashion style should be locked away in the annals of history, and only re-supplied for important dramatic re-enactments: you’re lucky this film counts as one of those special occasions.

The film goes to such lengths to reflect reality that we’re told all court dialogue used in the film is verbatim from the official transcript. This makes it especially difficult to see Dumont’s lawyer wilt every time the judge challenges the already half-hearted defense strategy.  As a result, we’re left wondering if everyone else knows something we don’t.  Dumont remains a bit of an enigma through much of the film, and his innocence is not exactly presumed, as the victim points him out in court as the man who raped her. Neither the witness nor the judge seem to take into account all the other factors that don’t fit, like missing tattoos and an entire house of people who say Dumont was with them on the night in question. But as the defense’s witnesses jumble their stories, the fact Dumont looks like a rapist (even if he’s not “the” rapist”) seems enough to seal his fate. If only he’d have shaved sooner.

Once he does, director Grou risks breaking the verisimilitude by using archival footage of Dumont during a climactic moment. We then return to Grondin’s performance, and it’s a testament to the filmmakers that we never seem to break our emotional connection. It’s a bold and overt decision, but one that pays off as the encounter is too strange and unique to believe otherwise. 

See, sometimes honesty goes a long way.

Sincerely,

Christopher

Status: Air Mail (3.5/5)