Released back in 2013, the original, quite bad Escape Plan had a single redeeming factor: it saw Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, however much past their prime, finally sharing the screen. The sequel, Escape Plan 2: Hades boasts no such claim. It doesn’t boast the humble claim of a theatrical release, either.
Like its predecessor, Hades sees Stallone’s Ray Breslin breaking out of the Best Prison Ever. Naturally, this prison’s called “Hades,” and, naturally, it’s a slightly better Best Prison Ever. Hades sports the lighting design of every post-’90s primetime game show, and its warden (Titus Welliver) seems to subject its prisoners to gladiator-style matches. 50 Cent also reprises his role, again playing “hacker about as convincing as Chris Hemsworth in Blackhat,” but the Schwarzenegger-shaped hole has here been filled with a similarly burly mass of Dave Bautista.
Incidentally, while this is the team’s latest contrived escape from an unlikely penitentiary, it’s somehow not their last: Stallone and Bautista have already shot Escape Plan 3: Devil’s Station. Truly, there’s no rest for the muscular security specialists that focus exclusively on busting out of outlandish super-prisons.
Escape Plan 2 hits Blu-ray, digital, and on-demand June 29.
