Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018) Reviews

• Bad Sequel...Audiences need Escape Plan from this film

  hilaryswank20112018-06-29

  Hong Kong has just theatrically released this VOD film since this week (June 28) even though Blu-ray discs are already available from Mainland China before its theatrical release. What audience expected for this film was the action star Sylvester Stallone (1946-) who played the protagonist Ray Breslin in The Escape Plan (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, 2013). The story of this China-US coproduction VOD film is that Ray Breslin's team is to break politically important personnels out of the world's notorious prisons. After Ray's trusted employee Shu Ren (Mainland Chinese actor Huang Xiaoming) kidnapped and prisoned in the most elaborated prison on the earth 'The Hades', Ray Breslin and its team assist Shu Ren's escape. This is actually a boring and money wasted movie sequel. There are several reasons for this. 1. Prison should not be 'colosseum'. This VOD film is full of colosseum scenes however audiences can not understand why there is a prison like that. This lack of reality and context is something causes audiences escaping from the theatre. 2. Antagonist Jaspar Cimbaal's motivation is confusing. The antagonist Jasper (played by Wes Chatham) is just want to manage the cutting edge prison on the earth? or just revenge Ray Breslin for firing him? The antagonist does not show the strongest and clearest desire to achieve anything. 3. Who is the main protagonist? Shu Ren or Ray Breslin? Audiences just want to see Sylvester Stallone's action film however Shu Ren's acting is just mechanically doing Kung Fu actions only. He is not able to replace Arnold Schwarzenegger for this film franchise. The most successful China-US coproduction in recent years is Geo Storm (2017). The Independence Day: Resurgence (2016) and The Escape Plan 2 : Hades (2018) are proved to be major failure. At the end of this film, audiences are not able to understand what the film is about. It is not a story-telling film but it is a marshal arts game. We just only saw endlessly colosseum-like prison, confusion and vagueness of character motivations and unbalance between Stallone and Huang Xiaoming's appearances. This VOD film is not only a waste of money but it is also a waste of filmmaking resources. Audiences need escape plan from this franchise.

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• Disappointing sequel to a decent escape movie

  Navzar2018-06-15

  I was a little bit worried when I learned that it will skip a theatrical release, but still looked forward to it. I really liked the first one and thought that the cast in this one was decent. Sadly, almost nothing about it works. The script is disastrously bad. The plot and pace are all over the place, making an 85 minute movie feel long. The cinematography is horrendous. The movie is filled with neon lights that are almost headache inducing. The fight scenes are banal and are there just for the sake of it.There are Sci-Fi elements that serve little purpose and don't really fit. Oh, and Stallone and Batista are secondary characters. This would not be a problem if the leads were interesting, charismatic or well written, but they unfortunately are none of those things. I enjoy B movies. For me, everything can be forgiven if the movie is fun. But this is just boring.

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• this is just horrible

  zathan-328482018-06-14

  The acting is mediocre at best. The cinematography is just terrible. most of the movie is filmed with a handheld camera and the cameraman has parkinsons. Imdb has not listed any budget for this movie and that is because there is no budget. CGI is awful, explosions and gunfire is so fake that there are no words to describe how bad it is. There is one cool scene and that is the barfight. Other than that there is nothing good about this movie. One of the worst sequels in history.

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• I managed to escape.

  chainshotuk2018-06-15

  I very much enjoyed the original movie and so was looking forward to seeing this. I watch about 30 minutes before I just stopped. Plot jumps all over the place and there is zero flow to the movie. You have no interest in the characters and the whole feel is just hollow and pointless. Do yourself a favor and spend the 30 minutes I wasted doing something else.

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• Video Hell!

  poetryinmotionpictures2018-06-20

  SPOILER: I really enjoyed Escape Plan. It was fun and although a little silly it was well put together well directed. Now I was surprised to see Stallone doing back to back sequels in Escape Plan 2 + 3, but if 2 is anything to go by then Stallone has slipped horribly into Straight-to-Video Hell! Which is quite apt as that's what Hades means (it was the Greek name for the underworld). So why is it so bad? - Well, firstly we start the film with characters (and actors) we've never seen before: A team on some kind of rescue mission from terrorists. Wait, what?! We don't see Stallone until 10 mins into the film. It's his team. He's the boss of a security firm in Atlanta now. But he's not the main character. Oh. The main character is Chinese actor Xiaoming Huang. No, I've never heard of him before either. Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt this actor is a big star in China. His martial arts are really good, and he has a certain presence about him. But his character here is so underwritten that you never engage with him as a character. So instead of being invested in him, you become a mere spectator of what happens to him. I'm sure Chinese money & market has a major part in his casting, but this isn't how to do it. Also featured is Cheng Tang, who (I'm sorry), is almost unintelligible in around half his scenes. But I think it's partly the director's fault. We frequently can't see him speaking as the camera is doing something strange. So you get a difficult to understand accent from a disembodied voice. So, Huang finds himself inside a new mega high-tech prison, where to achieve privileges you have to to win fights in a gladiatorial fight - for no apparent reason. Oh. This is such an old B-Movie cliché that I can't believe they went there, but I suppose they wanted to make use of Huang's martial arts and this is how they do it. It's a bit desperate though. Meanwhile, on the outside Stallone recruits Bautista to help find Huang and another team member who's gone missing. At this point you think this might pick up, but you'd be wrong. The problem is that none of this is joined up well. You frequently are barely comprehending what is supposed to be going on. There's no real focus to the film as we cut back and forth between outside and inside the prison - which nobody knows the location of. Dialogue is frequently missed or mumbled, especially by 50 Cent, who is so bad I think they could have employed a cardboard cut-out with a robot voice and it would have been a) more intelligible and b) a better performance. Seriously, why do people keep employing him? Bautista is underused, and is just a man mountain who terms up and does things. There's no character. He's just a thing that does stuff. Stallone, obviously is trying to spin-off successful films in which he was the action hero. Now older, he can't do that stuff anymore, however, when he does a little bit of action you can't help but be impressed. Here there's a good action scene in which he and Bautista waste numerous assassins, but I really don't know what that scene was about. It just seemed to be stuffed in there for a bit of action. Another scene is a bit silly really, where he faces a man at least 30 years younger than him in fisticuffs. Dude! You're in your 70's! Stop it! It's getting embarrassing now. The special effects in the film are grossly overdone but so low grade that you wonder how they managed to use 90's technology and make them look 80's, and the prison never feels like anything but a rather bad film set. The whole film looks rather B-Movie cheap. Although the script doesn't work for all the reasons I've given above, I reserve special mention for the director, Stephen C Miller, who seems to think that erratic and inappropriate camera movements is what directing means. This film could have been watchable if Miller was not at the helm. He's dire! It's like an 8-year-old was given a camera kit and tracks. This isn't style, it's mess. Nothing about his direction works. Nothing. No thing. In all seriousness, Miller has killed what might have been just a bad film and made it a very bad film indeed. Producers! Stop employing him! He has no idea what he's doing! Nothing he does works! Please, Stallone, you are better than this. You can write really good characters and you are actually a good actor. Do some thrillers. Act your age, dude. As for Escape Plan 3: Devil's Station, at least it won't have Miller directing. John Herzfeld at least knows how to use a camera.

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