Escape Plan: The Extractors (2019)

I rented this movie from RedBox.

So take everything wrong with the second film... and just make it worse. So much worse.
I would almost rate this movie a 1 star, but it's more 1 and a half to 2 stars. The second is more a 2 and a half, especially next to this one.

So the story of this movie is more of a direct sequel to the first than the second one was, but still a much worse film. Basically, the story is that the guy who wronged Stallone in the first movie was trapped out at sea at the end and left to die. Well he had a son, and he's back for revenge against Stallone. Gee... never seen that in a movie before. So he kidnaps this Chinese girl who's the daughter of the guy that was partners with the guy who was stranded out at sea who Stallone worked for in the first movie. Because apparently it's his fault to and that makes perfect sense. Then he also kidnaps Stallone's girlfriend to force him into action. And because he want's to hurt everybody close to Stallone.

So the whole thing that was the main point of Stallone was that he would get himself sent to maximum security prisons that were state of the art, and supposedly escape proof, then would work from the inside to find a way to escape and find flaws in the system. But that's all gone now as the prison here is some black site out int he middle east that's like an Alcatraz wannabe with seemingly no security that Stallone has to break into to get somebody else out. And they get in through the sewer... and there's like no security cameras or anything. It's ridiculous.
The first movie had the awesome, expensive, elaborate prison on a ship out on the ocean. The second had the high tech underground fortress prison. This movie prison is a discount Alcatraz with no security...

The action is underwhelming in this outside of a single fight scene with the character of Shen when he's first introduced, and that scene isn't even a minute long. And he feels more like a discount Jet-Li. Stallone seems to be phoning it in this time, even more so than in the second movie and only there for his paycheck. Batista is completely wasted, having probably less than 4 or 5 minutes of total screen time. All he does I the movie is accept a briefcase of money, tell Stallone about the prison over the phone, ride with them talking about his shotgun, uses the shotgun in one scene to blow a way a few guys in the prison with dragons breath rounds, has a single fight with one big dude, and then talks a little with Stallone at the end. He barely adds to the movie and it's a real shame. Also Xiaoming Huang from the second film, who was introduced as basically Stallone's apprentice and future replacement and was almost just as good as him... nowhere to be scene in this film. I don't think he was even mentioned, and he was the main character of the second movie. Just poof, Thanos snapped out of the script.

And we are given very little reason to even care about these characters. In fact the only guy I did care about was given an unsatisfying, almost random death in the prison without his story arch ever being resolved, or having any sort of resolution for what happened to him at all. I get that that is more realistic in a sense, but it's just bad story telling.

There's not much of anything this film has as a redeeming factor, and it's a waste of time. Skip it. Just watch the awesome first movie and avoid it's sequels. Maybe watch the second one, but not this garbage fire.

Mistake Status: No.

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