Marketed as the first film to feature old action dogs Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger together as top-billed stars in the same film, Escape Plan fails to come across as the high-octane action thriller we were led to believe. Ironically however, neither is it the compelling big-brained puzzler it thinks it is. Director Mikael Hafstrom overcomplicates a simple, straightforward prison escape movie and turns it into an only mildly interesting procedural that lurches and chugs in episodic fits.

Stallone plays Ray Breslin, the world’s leading authority on prisons -- building them, securing them, but most importantly, breaking out of them for a living. When he’s offered double his going rate to evaluate The Tomb, an off-the-grid private max-security prison, Breslin can’t resist the challenge.

It’s a tough job for sure. Full of the world’s deadliest criminals who have been “disappeared” by the government, the isolated prison is a pitiless maze of suspended glass cells, each kept under 24-hour video surveillance and surrounded by heavily-armed, masked guards. But equipped with a secret “safe word,” Breslin goes in to engineer a jailbreak so he can provide a report on the privately-owned facility’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities.  Things begin to go wrong almost immediately however, as he’s beaten by the sadistic warden Hobbes (Jim Caviezel, chewing the scenery) who claims to know nothing of the pre-arranged evacuation code.

Breslin soon realizes he’s been set up by an unknown enemy – someone wishing to keep him imprisoned indefinitely. But who’s behind the nefarious plan and why aren’t his teammates on the outside able to come to his aid? Those are just a couple of the mysteries he must solve, along with how to free himself from an escape-proof prison.

Inside The Tomb, Breslin buddies up to Emil Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger), the only person he can trust and the one who may hold the key to uncovering information that could secure their freedom.

This is where Hafstrom flips the switch, turning Escape Plan into a lunkheaded action piece. But it’s not even a good lunkheaded action piece. The greatest prison escape films -- The Great Escape and Shawshank Redemption among them -- often found success from filmmakers who knew how to methodically milk the suspense and mystery from the story before exploding into the grand escape finale. Hafstrom keeps our interest for the film’s first two-thirds with Breslin’s improvised rigging of escape tools and meticulous analysis of guard behavior. But then the director can’t explain how, in the film’s closing minutes, escapees run right through the middle of the prison -- one of the world’s most secure prisons, mind you -- without being detected… while shooting machine guns. Haftsrom forgoes a deft hand and nuanced storytelling for bull-in-a-china-shop dumb luck. Nonsensical.

What’s wrong with making a dumb, simple-minded action movie that knows what it is? There’s certainly a place for that. But as odd as it sounds, Escape Plan isn’t quite dumb enough to be that kind of film. The first movie to feature Stallone and Schwarzenegger sharing the screen should be a fun, adrenaline-packed thrill ride. Escape Plan is not. And no, a Schwarzenneger wink to the camera as he picks up a .50 cal doesn’t make it that.  

(Released by Summit Entertainment and rated “R” for violence and language throughout.)

Review also posted at www.franksreelreviews.com.