Schwarzenegger, Stallone Team Up to Escape from Person of Interest

Mr. Reese, aka Jim Caviezel, plays the Evil Warden Who Does Evil. The plot seems to be... well, it looks like they decided to make a movie about the Sean Connery character's backstory in The Rock.

Which isn't the most awful idea Hollywood's had.

They're calling a movie about an escape plan Escape Plan, which is only slightly less creative and interesting as calling it Stallone/Schwarzenegger Buddy Prison Vehicle Title TBD.

I kind of like this old Stallone. He's like an athlete who's way past his prime but who manages to stay in the game anyway. In the commentary for Rocky Balboa, he's pretty upfront about the fact that he's no longer a star and no one wants to finance his movies anymore. But, like his most famous character, he's determined to keep at it anyway. His late-career movies have been middling-to-okay, but then, his early career movies were middling-to-okay too (except Rockys I, II, and III, which were good) and his middle-career movies were just pretty damn awful.

Anyone up for a Middle Stallone Retrospective of The Specialist and Assassins and Tango and Cash? No I thought not.

So, at age 60-something, he's back to making middling-to-okay movies, but a lot less rah-rah Sing the Praises of the Unconquerable Hero and a lot more Here's What an Average Man Well Past His Prime Can Do If He Dedicates Himself to It Enough. A lot more human, and, as I get older, a lot more likable.

Since we're on the subject of Stallone, can I mention a movie I liked that no one else did? Oscar was Stallone's attempt at an outright farce, a 1920s period piece about a gangster trying to go straight and buy into the goodwill of a snooty WASP aristocratic banking family, and being undermined by the Sicilian schemers in his family and his various mobster underlings. Most critics panned it. I think it was your typical John Landis movie, by which I mean a sort of interesting, sort of novel attempt at a crowd-pleaser which, like everything since Animal House, totally bombed.

But it's actually a fun example of the genre, a decent go at it, and Hollywood barely makes any farces. And I pretty much like every farce I see, from the really good ones (What's Up Doc?) to the very so-so ones (Noises Off, a farce about the staging of a farce on Broadway) to the half-bad but half-awesome ones (Once Upon a Crime). It's just a fun genre.

Oscar isn't harmed at all that Marisa Tomei plays Stallone's bratty, spoiled, slightly boy-crazy daughter, nor that they wisely chose to cast Some Tight Body-Hugging Dresses in the role of Marisa Tomei's wardrobe, or that she puts hope into the George Costanza Dream by going for an old, chubby guy she is plainly too hot for (Tim Curry).

posted by Ace at 01:54 PM

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