Director: Steven C Miller
Writer: Miles Chapman (Screenplay)
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Dave Bautista, Xiaoming Huang, Jesse Metcalfe, 50 Cent, Wes Chatham, Chen Tang, Jaime King
Plot: Ray Breslin manages an elite team of security specialists trained in the art of breaking people out of the world’s most impenetrable prisons. When his most trusted operative, Shu Ren, is kidnapped and disappears inside the most elaborate prison ever built, entirely computerized and constantly changing shape, Ray must track him down with the help of some of his former friends.
Runtime: 1 Hour 36 Minutes
There may be spoilers the rest of the review
Verdict: Just Boring
Story: Escape Plan 2: Hades starts as Ray Breslin (Stallone) sees his team Shu Ren (Huang), Like (Metcalfe) and Kimbral (Chatham) go wrong resulting in the death of a team member. We pick up one year later we travel to Bangkok where Shu Ren is watching over his cousin Yusheng Ma (Tang) and things don’t go well as Shu Ren ends up in Hades, a new state of the art prison known for a zoo for inmates to fight.
Shu Ren uses his training to survive and plan the escape with Luke, while Ray looks to make contacts including Trent DeRosa (Bautista) to help conduct the big rescue attempt in the new prison that no one seems to be able to escape from.
Thoughts on Escape Plan 2 Hades
Characters – Ray Breslin is the man that runs the security team, we met him in the first film, he has created a team that can do the job for him and for the most part in this movie he is trying to figure out where his team is and how to get them out, his narration to Shu keeps him relevant in this film. Trent DeRosa is an old friend of Ray, he has the connections in Bangkok which brings him to Ray side, though he is mostly just here for the tech side of things. Shu Ren is the student of Ray, he has been learning how to conduct himself in the solution of the escaping from prisons and now he must put all his lessons together to figure out how to escape. Luke is another student, he is reckless as times, but will work for the team, Hush is the connection around the world with his hacking skills and Jasper is the teammate that gets let go only to end up in the prison with Shu Ren.
Performances – When we come to the performance, we need to understand certain factors, first Xiaoming Huang is the star of this movie and he is good, but his character is written to handle things strongly, but seems to come off weak when it comes to knowing what he is doing. Stallone is mostly the mentor in this film, he gets a couple of scenes though he isn’t involved anywhere near as much as the first film and looks like he is here for a pay check. Dave Bautista is one of the hottest action stars in Hollywood now, he is completely wasted in this role, which is sad because he could be the star is written correctly.
Story – The story continues to follow the lives of security expert Ray Breslin who along with his team can break out of any prison, we enter a new computerised prison with state of the art protection system which should be uncrackable. We do focus on one of the students Shu Ren more than Ray this time as he goes over the rules we learnt first time in the battle to survive the prison. If we look at the story, it does feel slow paced for the most part and doesn’t get going enough, we compromise on characters we know to cover up the lack of screen time the originals have and the prison never really feels like a prison. The whole escape seems rushed and you will not believe in anyway they won’t make it.
Action – The action when it comes to the fight sequences are good and you can see they bought in Xiaoming Huang for the fight sequences. The shooting scenes are fine, but nothing overly interesting.
Settings – The film puts us in the new prison, though it is so computerised it never feels like it would be real. Outside the prison it is all generically forgettable location.
Special Effects – The effects are not impressive either, because we do get moments of computerised electricity to contain that look bad.
Scene of the Movie – Give big Dave a gun.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – Ray is barely in the film.
Final Thoughts – This is a bad sequel, it does come off slow and boring for the most part and is hugely miss sold on the idea Stallone is the star of the movie.
Overall: Sequel not worth watching.
Rating
