Blu-ray Review - Escape Plan: The Extractors (2019)

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Swinging for the fences while trying not to snack on the scenery, as a B-movie villain who jovially rattles off creepy anecdotes to intimidate his hostages at a moment's notice, Devon Sawa commands our attention in Escape Plan: The Extractors (aka Escape Plan 3).

As it turns out, however, he's one of only a few bright spots in this otherwise bland, paint-by-numbers actioner. Borrowing from the Game of Thrones playbook, The Extractors is shot in so much darkness that you'll probably wonder — as you squint along — if you either forgot to pay your electric bill or there's something's wrong with your TV.

But just when we think we've seen enough to know we're not going to miss much if we hit eject, Sawa and fellow new cast member Jin Zhang show up to change our mind. As the Sylvester Stallone franchise's newest dastardly villain and kick-ass hero respectively, Sawa and Zhang are so entertaining that viewers will probably wish they'd been tapped to play the leads in a new (and hopefully much better) action movie.

Like a silent, black-and-white movie from the 1920s where a kidnapped woman is left helplessly tied to the railroad tracks, Extractors' entire plot — what little there is of it — revolves around not one but two damsels in distress.

Called to action after a Chinese technology mogul's daughter is kidnapped and a flash drive with his name on it is found at the scene of the crime, Stallone's security (and escape) expert Ray Breslin prepares to go on the hunt to bring her back from an abandoned old Latvian prison where she's being held.

Raising the stakes by making her captor none other than Breslin's corrupt ex-partner's son (Sawa) — who grabbed her more to kick off the long game of revenge than collect a ransom — the film's screenwriters try to give it more emotional heft by visiting their favorite creative well again.

Not content with just one lady in waiting, The Extractors rinses and repeats the film's plot as Stallone's onscreen girlfriend (played by a tragically underutilized Jaime King) gets abducted and thrown in the Latvian pokey known as the Devil's Station as well.

While Dave Bautista has an absolute blast blowing stuff up and fighting his stunt double (which in Hollywood, I'm sure counts as some sort of action star on-the-job therapy), from a wasted King and a blink-and-you-missed it return by Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson to a one note turn by Stallone, the rest of the franchise's previous stars just seem bored.

To inject the series — which was a huge hit in China — with a much needed shot of adrenaline, Stallone recruited dynamic Chinese star Jin Zhang, who bursts onto the screen and takes down a number of Breslin's co-workers with the aid of an umbrella. Fortunately, the two men aren't rivals for long. After the battle is over, Zhang's Shen teams up with Breslin because it seems that damsel in distress number one is his girlfriend.

Having multiplied the same plot point by Breslin and employed it twice, as director and co-writer John Herzfeld's film continues, we discover that that's one time and one damsel too many when the otherwise terrific Zhang and Harry Shun Jr. get kicked to the curb in the disappointing movie's largely lifeless second half.

And shockingly, although Stallone comes alive in a brutal — and from what I gather unchoreographed — actual fight with Devon Sawa that left both men bloody and battered, as written, Extractors might've worked better if Zhang had been promoted to the lead, Sawa and Bautista were left in the mix, and Stallone and King played an even smaller role.

As a lifelong Stallone fan, that's a hard truth to write, although it's probably not as hard as Zhang knocking down human obstacles with his trusty umbrella or Sawa exclaiming that he loves the sound of prison bars locking up for the night with the same glee that a child has after watching their first Stallone movie fight.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Backtrace (2018)

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A veritable chameleon with a particular knack for playing disabled and/or fragile characters with the utmost of sincerity, while there are no false notes about Matthew Modine's performance in Brian A. Miller's direct-to-disc actioner Backtrace (aside from the laughable idea that one can have a spinal injection and instantly go bounding up and down stairs), the same cannot be said for the film itself.

Hoping to use Modine's talent to distract from the Grand Canyon sized holes in logic and common sense on display in the script by Mike Maples, which, in an attempt to outdo McQuarrie, Shyamalan, and Nolan, never settles for one twist when three might do, Backtrace finds the actor in disabled mode once again.

Busted out of a prison hospital by three people hoping that a cutting edge drug might inspire the amnesiac bank robber to remember where he stashed twenty million dollars in loot seven years earlier, while initially we give in to the fine if admittedly far-fetched Phillip K. Dick flavored Noirish set-up, Maples loses focus and the plot quickly spirals out-of-control.

Determined to find the escapee he's sure has been faking amnesia for seven years (X-rays be damned!), a thoroughly bored looking Sylvester Stallone graces the screen from time-to-time in half-hearted '80s cop movie mode, but sadly, the combined star power of Modine and Stallone isn't enough to save the film from its thoroughly ludicrous conclusion.

Doing the best he can with a limited budget, Miller gets a chance to stage more exciting action sequences in Backtrace than he did in the recent Reprisal and while the latter was more successful from a storytelling perspective, this film makes you wonder what he could potentially do with a bigger budget and a script that actually makes sense.

Written with a "look, ma, no hands!" glee, while invariably taking away an illogical twist or four would probably disappoint Maples, underneath the absurdity, there are moments in Backtrace where you can almost see a much better film hiding — just like Modine's twenty million dollars — in plain sight.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: Cliffhanger (1993)

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Although Blu-ray clarity enhances some flaws from Cliffhanger's '93 technical wizardry, viewing Renny Harlin's film again in the best possible version since its seventeen year old theatrical run proves that it hasn't lost its ability to thrill.

Having helmed the first sequel to Die Hard, from the moment Harlin's Cliffhanger begins, you're reminded of what a stellar period the late '80s to mid '90s were for action films because they didn't rely too heavily on computers to achieve effects that could be done with stuntmen, invention, and thinking outside boxes that people hadn't even invented yet.

An important cinematic stepping-stone for Sylvester Stallone who had wrapped what we assumed was the last Rocky movie but had yet to find his footing yet post-Rocky or Rambo, in its '93 release Cliffhanger reminded us just what set him apart as an action hero. After walking away from the disastrous '92 comedy without laughs, Stop or My Mom Will Shoot, Stallone climbed the Rockies (or really the Italian Alps) under the guidance of Harlin and alongside co-stars Janine Turner, Michael Rooker, and John Lithgow.

And while it's easy to spot some of the doubles and shots that were filmed separately as the color changes when we see the men on the mountains versus Janine Turner flying the rescue chopper, Harlin's perfectionist mindset and desire to obtain as much reality as he can in the way the stunts were carried out helps set the movie apart from the pack. Aside from some of the extreme violence, the shot choices, edits, and masterful execution is always spot on, which can be evidenced right from its uneasy introduction.

Falsely setting up the movie's tone as a jokey Top Gun styled action comedy complete with Stallone's obligatory line that he's "just hangin' out" on the edge of a mountain, we're in for quite a surprise when the tone shifts into dark, urgent territory that's usually approached in the third act of an action film. What begins as a routine rescue shifts when something goes horribly wrong when Michael Rooker's girlfriend slips from the hanging upside-down one armed grasp of his rescue colleague Stallone's hand and plummets to her death.

With an audience that wasn't quite used to seeing heroes fail to save the damsel in distress, the opening of Cliffhanger — which still made me jump seventeen years later — ensures us that we aren't in the era of '80s superheroes without capes but regular blue collar heroes who doubted themselves like their movie descendants from the '70s.

Guiltily retreating from both his long-time girlfriend Jessie (Janine Turner playing a character who seems like a close relative to the pilot she portrayed on TV's Northern Exposure) and his best friend Rooker, Stallone returns a year back in the hopes he can persuade Jessie to leave the Rocky Mountains and start a new life with him elsewhere.

Lecturing him about his cowardice and betrayal in ditching them when they needed him the most, eventually Stallone's climber ends up meeting Rooker in a near deadly reunion on the edge of a cliff as Rooker lays into Stallone for the accidental death. Yet, the two have no choice but to work together, first out of duty as rescue workers and secondly as hostages when they're called into a fake emergency only to discover a group of ruthless criminals headed up by John Lithgow has stolen one hundred million dollars from the United States Treasury Department plane.

Topping the opening intensity of the damsel's free-fall, Harlin presents an action sequence that's so complicated that it may very well be his very best considering how much of it was real and how much was edited together effects wise. Breathlessly paced, the the mid-air two plane hijacking of briefcases of cash involving double-agents, surprise heroes and villains is Harlin's '90s version of the O.K. Corral shootout by setting it at twenty thousand feet by mirroring the pounding of our own hearts in the rapid cuts as the criminals discover that there is no such thing as easy money.

Creating the rest of the film's impossible plot, the plan goes so wrong that they crash land in one place and the three briefcases containing the money hit three completely different locations on the mountains as well. And obviously, since the Treasury Department is involved, the briefcases have three tracking devices contained inside, which necessitates Rooker and Stallone to be kept captive in order to play "fetch."

Sending Stallone up a mountain without his jacket as insurance and threatening to kill both when the money is retrieved, John Lithgow gleefully chews the snow off the scenery as the military trained criminal mastermind complete with an impossible to place over-the-top, only-in-the-movies accent that swings like a pendulum from quasi-British to Lithgow's impression of Peter Sellers' character Clouseau's boss Chief Inspector Dreyfus in The Pink Panther series.

Despite some major gaps in logic and a few, “well, why wouldn't they . . .” hypothetical questions that make you question some of the events, it's an entertaining blast of a movie that shouldn't be in the works to be remade but nonetheless a new version is scheduled to hit screens in 2011.

Yet, even by contemporary standards, Cliffhanger is at times still so outrageously violent that I can easily see why it was originally saddled with an NC-17 since it goes way too far in two fights in particular involving Cool Runnings actor Leon and another one with Rooker verses a UK soccer fan.

Co-written by Stallone, it's immediately apparent that he was truly at his peak in the film (no pun intended) as an aging but still remarkably handsome movie star whose life experience only added to the charisma we fell in love with in his earliest work.

And while Cliffhanger was written off by some critics at the time as just "Die Hard on a Mountain" especially considering the tie with Harlin, the formerly forgotten film has become a guilty pleasure. Thankfully, in celebration of its loyal fans, Sony chose to enough numerous special features on the Blu-ray transfer including commentary tracks and behind-the-scenes bonus extras, some of which were previously available in earlier disc releases.

Text ©2010, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com
Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.