Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018) Poster

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3/10
Disappointing sequel to a decent escape movie
Navzar15 June 2018
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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3/10
Bleh...
JazonZaztrow15 June 2018
Let's be brief. All of the fighting / action scenes are shaky cam nonsense. 95% of the dialogue is expositional. The direction seems very basic. This feels and looks more like an episode of an American broadcast network crime drama television program, than film. I didn't go in expecting anything and I was left with less.
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5/10
Didnt hate nor love it
mette_rytter6 July 2018
5/10, however it doesn't deserve a rating under 5. Some good actors, and some bad. The script - decent, with flaws. But the movie wasn't boring!
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1/10
this is just horrible
zathan-3284814 June 2018
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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Video Hell!
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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1/10
I managed to escape.
chainshotuk15 June 2018
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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1/10
KEEP THE GODDAMN CAMERA STILL
niborino-525483 February 2020
I like Stallone, he might be too old for fight scenes and stunts(or should be, who knows how he manages these days?!) but he is one of my all time greats and I am glad he still does movies. So you would think I went in expecting to see Stallone. I was wrong. A team needs a setup, I do not care about any of the characters. The lead Asian man was a nice surprise since I love martial arts movies but his character is like a walking cliche. He does martial arts, meditates etc. It feels shoehorned in to give him weight. His martial arts seem good but that leads me me to the main problem I have with this movie: they cannot keep the camera still at all. Why, oh why is it so hard to keep the camera still? Put the damn thing on a table, the constant movement(AWAY FROM THE ACTION) does not help, it ruins the coreography which seems good, just that I can't see any of it because the damn camera moves so much all over the place. I apologise for cursing but I honestly was really looking forward to this movie, being a Stallone fan but this movie I cannot recommend in any way shape or form. Stick to the first one.
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1/10
Please skip this one.
dediwidiarso15 June 2018
What an awful movie this is, I cannot believe this movie hits the theaters. It is clearly a B-movie, very cheap CGI, the acting is poor and the story? Take a stack of cards, throw it in the air, there's your story. I knew this movie would suck but I did not expect it would be that bad. It is full with plot holes, if you see this movie, question marks will be floating above your head during the whole movie. A lot of viewers will leave their seats and some might ask their money back.
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1/10
Escape plan 2..Stallone does a bunk
raidenspirit15 June 2018
OMG....where to start with this god awful film.. anyone giving this above 6 out of 10 is reviewing this for the company or sponsored as they are lying through their teeth and the guy who said it was better than the first is lying to himself...

this movie was so bad and the actors couldn't talk properly, the acting was so wooden and forced, the movie CGI was cheap and nasty and its been done before a 1000 times better too. the first film was a good movie with a convincing villain and the story worked, this one there is no story and to really take the p*** Stallone is in this film for about 10 mins tops and even 50 Cent looked bored.

i cant express how bad this film really is and Stallone should be ashamed of such a poor sequel, this mess is hitting cinemas soon and i feel sorry for those who go watch this utter mess.

avoid this garbage like the plague
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2/10
Terrible.
neil-swift-2345315 June 2018
What a shambles of a movie. No coherence whatsoever. Just jumped from one scene to the next without any links. If Stallone wasn't in it I wouldn't have bothered but the role he played and time he was in it just didn't amount to anything. "Enjoy" at your peril.
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4/10
Big failure
Leofwine_draca25 December 2018
Warning: Spoilers
While the first ESCAPE PLAN was nothing special, it still succeeded as a mildly enjoyable B-movie action flick; sadly this sequel is nothing like. Instead it's a hastily-made, sloppily-produced effort in which Stallone feels like a guest actor in his own movie and various familiar faces are wasted in nothing roles. The main actors are nondescript Chinese stars who take part in regular and regularly disappointing martial arts fights which are randomly shoehorned into the story to make little thematic sense; even worse the choppy choreography renders all of them unappealing. Dave Bautista is particularly wasted here and the awful screenplay is all over the place, throwing in sci-fi elements and repeats from the first film to little effect.
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8/10
What a fun action movie should be!
tom-1036129 June 2018
Don't let the haters and 1 stars sway you! This movie has Sly doing what Sly does best, Bautista kicking a**, 50cent playing it cool and Xiaoming Huang adding another dimension and great fight skills to a cool prison break film.
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6/10
Watched it because of the bad reviews and it was not that bad
stefan-526-29613013 July 2018
It wasn't a real killer movie that let me sit with open mouth. No. The story was a bit weak and too straight forward and some scenes were too artificially overplayed. But it was exactly what I needed to just sit back and enjoy good old Sylvester Stallone doing a good job. Some of the other characters did a good job too. So six stars for a movie that I would probably not watch again soon, but it was good to start to relax the brain from work and start the weekend.
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1/10
Nothing close to Fist part.
prakash-chaudhary16 June 2018
If you are thinking that - Ohh I enjoyed first part let finish the sequel. Its a total waste of time.
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3/10
Bad follow-up in low budget with a lots of fights and several claustrophobic scenes
ma-cortes7 September 2019
Below average sequel with little action and too much interior scenarios . It blends suspense , thrills, action , twists and turns . it is believed that no one can ever flee from impregnable prison , except for a daring man , Ray Breslín : a senile Silvester Stallone . As he manages an elite team of security specialists trained in the art of breaking people out of the most impenetrable prisons . Years after he fought his way out of an inescapable prison , Ray has organized a new awesome security force formed by brave members played by Dave Bautista , Xiamong Huang , Jesse Metcalf . And his usual colleague , the resourceful technology expert Shu Ren : 50 Cent Jackson , as well as his sweet companion Abigail : Jaime King .But one of his team members goes missing , as he is kidnapped and disappears inside the most elaborate jail ever built : ¨Hades¨ , entirely computerized by a huge super computer called Galileo and ordinarily changing its shape , then Breslín has to return to the hell he once escaped from . As a decrepit Ray must track him down with the help of his former colleagues , infiltrating himself into a futuristic facility with extreme security measures . This is not a prison , it is a Machine . He's back.

This thrilling flick packs intrigue , nail-biting violence and lots of fights . The movie takes place into four walks of a high technology jail with plenty of computers and glimmer lights . Of course , expired Stallone is also locked and equally determinated to get his freedom, using his special skills to break out , as he goes on to push the boundaries of what is human possible , dealing with his preparatives and fights to escape by confronting nasty enemies . Sylvester Stallone plays in his ordinary , but already out-of-date , style as the obstinate hero to get the wished escape .The final confrontation between Stallone supported by his underlings and the baddies is stimulating and violent , including some surprises . In the film shows up some actors from previous installment as 5o Cent Jackson , and Stallone himself , adding others as Xiamong Huang , Dave Bautista, Wes Chatham , Titus Welliver and Jaime King who replaced Amy Ryan as Abigail .The motion picture was badly directed by Steven C Miller and was filmed in 20 days only , and several countries was exhibited direct to video . Steve C Miller is an expert on action and terror movies , usually played by famous actors , but with no much success , such as : Line of duty , First kill, Arsenal, Marauders , Submerged , Extraction , Under the bed , The agression Scale, Scream of the Banshee , Automaton transfusion , among others. Rating 3.5/10. Only for Sylvester Stallone's hardcore fans .

This Escape plan trilogy is formed by the first , original and the best : ¨Escape plan¨ 2013 by Mikael Hafstrom with James Cazievel , Arnold Schwarzenegger, 50 cent Jackson , Amy Ryan , Vinnie Jones ; in which Stallone finds himself set up and incarcerated in the world's most secret and secure prison, ¨The Tomb¨ -a highly fortified prison based on his own design- and he must use his skills to escape with help from the inside . Following a third outing titled ¨The extractors¨ 2019 by John Herzfeld with 50 Cent , Jaime King , Sea Bruckner , Russell Wong , Daniel Bernhardt, this latter concerns a rescue of the abducted daughter of a Hong Kong mogul from a formidable Latvian prison,, then Breslin's girlfriend is also kidnapped.
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1/10
did not expect to be this bad
matin186515 June 2018
This is how you butcher the original movie,the only reason i watched it i thought this one follows the first one.
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2/10
Can't even understand the sequel
babulchoudhary-7609021 July 2018
Warning: Spoilers
I scratched my head and repeatedly watched the scenes but failed to understand the conclusion of this movie , what was plan B it didn't even talk about that plan and editing was awful I slept while watching it because I can't understand what's going on the screen. Please at least add some concept or climax that correlates the past scenes or else it is a flop.I started watching it because of syllver Stallone nd it's part 1 awesome movie , but this is a sure crap.
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1/10
Garbage - One of Stallones worst DTV sequel movies in history ever made!
NightmareOnElmStreetFan4 November 2019
WTH happened with this movie? I like and I enjoy the first movie two action heroes together this movie is a peace a garbage!!! Stallone and Schwarzenegger headlined 2013's Escape Plan teaming up for the first time since the Expendables but moreover working together for the entire movie. Why Stallone why? Why was this movie made? What is wrong with this movie? Boring as hell, A lot of CGI, shaky cam, horrible dialogue, horrible acting, terrible music sound, Stallone isn't even in this movie.

The plot makes no sense. This movie is more a sci-fi film, it has no action. The plot is pointless. Horrible shaky cam jumps up and down. When Stallone fights on the end, that is his stunt double. Stallone is far too old to fight with a younger guy. What the hell Stallone? Why did he went to make this movie? Did he do it only for the money? In this movie Stallone isn't much in it! His character Ray Breslin is useless, he does nothing. Sly is old and his character is old fat sack! Sly even him self is disappointed, I am dissappointed Sly. Hades might boast some decent star power, but there isn't a celebrity in the world who could save this bargain bin nonsense from feeling like a bootlegged ripoff of its own franchise. Not even Arnold Schwarzenegger, who faced off against Stallone in the first one, could have rescued this from abject boredom.

The ending is unexplained this movie is nosence un realistic joke! I will never watch this movie again. I don't need to watch this movie in my life again. I am staying away. I am Stallone fan 4 life but this sequel? Attrocius sucks! It sucks, sucks, sucks and sucks more. Dave Bautista is wasted in this movie. The plot makes no sense, the soundtrack makes no sense. This movie is garbage waste material deserve to be in trash. Who ever is going to buy this movie on Blu-ray disc will have a bad day! Stallone's worst garbage movie he ever did, he only made it for the money.

Jaime King as Abigail is in this movie replacing Amy Ryan, but we don't see the actress whole picture only half of it. 50 Cent I don't see him full lengt I only see him half. Horrible cast, horrible acting, horrible writing, horrible direction. Steven C. Miller messy blew it, you blew it Miller! This movie is really bloody messy, stay away. It has so manny CGI colors, no songs, no heart, no souls nothing!
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1/10
Whatta a pathetic performance
spiritual622 March 2020
Can't believe what I was seeing.. Looked very armature.
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1/10
Pure rage pain
BandSAboutMovies3 September 2019
Warning: Spoilers
Five years after the original Escape Plan, this sequel was released, bringing back Sylvester Stallone and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson to reprise their roles and Dave Bautista, Huang Xiaoming, Jaime King, Jesse Metcalfe, Titus Welliver and Wes Chatham in as new cast members. While in the U.S. this was a straight-to-DVD release, it came out in theaters in Russia and China. Despite not having great box office numbers, it still inspired another sequel, 2019's Escape Plan: The Extractors.

Stallone, never one to mince words, said on Instagram that this movie was the "most horribly produced film I have ever had the misfortune to be in."

Ray Breslin (Stallone) continues to operate his security company with senior members Hush (Jackson) and Abigail (Jamie King), along with Shu Ren (Chinese star Xiaoming), Jasper Kimbral (Chatham, who was in The Hunger Games films) and Luke Graves (Metcalfe, who was on Desperate Housewives).

During a hostage rescue mission, Kimbral goes off mission, which leads to a hostage getting killed and Breslin firing him. This leads to him joining the enemy and becoming part of the Hades prison, where he soon imprisons Shu and his cousin Yusheng. He's now forced to battle other prisoners in a fight club and meeting the warden, Gregor "Zookeeper" Faust (Titus Welliver, who was on Lost), who wants Yusheng's communications patents in exchange for their release.

Breslin learns that Hades is funded by the same mysterious organization who funded the Tomb - from the first movie - and seeks help from an ex-employee, Trent DeRosa (Dave Bautista). And then Luke is caught and sent to Hades, a place where the layout changes every single night. Of course, Breslin allows himself to be arrested and taken to Hades and our heroes win the day.

This movie was frankly intolerable. Speaking of intolerable, Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy is in this, too. And Stallone is only in this for about fifteen minutes. Really.

Director Steven C. Miller has been part of several Lionsgate films, such as Extraction, Marauders, Arsenal and First Kill. He also directed a remake of Silent Night, Deadly NIght and almost brought a new version of Motel Hell to the screen.

The funniest part of this movie is this revelation from IMDB, which blows the central conceit of the movie out of the water: "Part of the plot revolves forcing someone to reveal a patent as if it was a secret. Patents are not secret, the point being to make something public to secure protection for commercial use. If something was supposed to be kept secret, then it would be called a secret."
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1/10
If you want to have a continuous seizure for more than an hour,
chimakjmp16 June 2018
Warning: Spoilers
Watch this film! It has all a bad film needs. Bad acting it looks like it came off from a student short film. From the beginning we felt really disappointed, the transitions from scene to scene was awful, though it made us feel like we were high and was suffering from all the diseases, hitting us all at once. Though I give the director kudos for best crossover film it has given us. We saw a snippet of the fast and the furious, I mean they tried so hard to squeeze in a car scene, even though it was clearly unnecessary.

There was also a weird Jimmy Neutron vibe, whenever, Huang Xiaoming, the star thought of something brilliant. The prison itself made us feel like we were watching a Star Wars film, it sucked, it made me feel sleepy. The plot itself was an idiotic way to make a sequel to the first one good. I mean the movie stars off where a guy from work gets fired, and the movie suddenly takes off to a revenge story with a guy making a high-tech, advance of the art prison in one year. Stressing the point where he just did all of this just because he got fired by Sylvester Stallone.

In conclusion, the film is the worst film we have watched where they scenes made us laugh, and make fun of the acting of all the casts. The movie is pretty much comprised of Sylvester Stallone being an inside voice to Huang Xiaoming. But all is well in the end as we left the theater laughing and recalling all the bad acting, the movie could pass as a comedy but as an action?

No...
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Worst movie ever
stevenavelastegui16 June 2018
I have never written a review for a movie. But here i am.... Where to begin ? There are just so many flaws in this movie, not to mention... This is the #1 Worst Movie i have ever seen. And i have seen some crappy movies. The acting in this is horrible. And 1/2 the actors english is unrecognizable. Lets just say that Stalone speaks the best English out of the entire cast. The story line in this Stinks, and is way too unbeliveable, and yet super predictable. I'm actually wrighting this during the final 5 minutes of the movie, as i'm appauled thati finished it. I don't think anyone took the time to read the script before making the movie. And did i say the acting SUCKS ? Sly is a 6 in acting on a good day, for this maybe a 4. everyone else ranks right at 1 at best.... I WISH I COULD GET 1.5HRS OF MY LIFE BACK....DON'T WATCH THIS CRAP.
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8/10
Receive the gift. Not the wrapper.
Schuriken20 June 2018
This is a very descent film. Maybe the CGI is cheesy and the acting a bit wooden. But it does offer a deeper meaning. In our time and age is very hard to judge a film by the quality of CGI. But that is the whole point. It doesnt really matter. Noone has ever chewed on the wrapper instead of the chocolate bar.

It would be fair to say the CGI is bad and everything else is bad too. But this is not the case. And it is an error to snowball this film by taking account of the CGI.

Lets examine this case in reverse. What if the same film frame by frame had an astonishing expensive super impressive CGI ? You would not be able to see past that. The meaning of this film would be hidden under so many layers of heavy CGI that you would not be able to see the meaning.

The cheap CGI releases the ability of the viewer to receive the meaning of this film. It makes it easier to see past the effects curtain and see what is on the other side. Stallone knows this. He is an extremely experienced actor and film maker, he might not be a Stanley Kubrick but in this case I think the cheap CGI was meant to be cheap from the start. I think it was a wise choice to do so by Stallone.

And that is why we are going to get another escape plan.
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6/10
Cheesy writing/screenplay, poor editing, but still enjoyable and entertaining
Top_Dawg_Critic27 June 2018
Sure this film had some cheesy writing and a flawed screenplay not to mention poor editing, but the pacing was great, directing not bad, acting decent and more importantly, I enjoyed it and still found it entertaining. Not even close to the first film, but certainly not deserving of the 3.8 score. Had the editing been better (I'm guessing most of the plot issues were from cutting the film down to a decent length), I would have score it higher, but still deserving of at least my 6/10.
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3/10
What happened?...
paul_haakonsen18 November 2018
Whereas the first "Escape Plan" movie was no stroke of brilliance it actually might just have been in comparison to the rubbish that is "Escape Plan 2: Hades".

Wow, talk about a ridiculous storyline if there ever was one! This is the sort of sequel that should never have seen the light of day and it is unfathomable of how something as abysmal such as this came into existence.

Poorly written storyline and script, and the acting performances in the movie, despite there being some well enough action stars here, was just questionable. It was as if the actors themselves didn't even buy into the storyline. This was definitely not one of the brightest moments in Sylvester Stallone's acting career.

There is a lot of action and fighting in the movie which is the one and only thing the movie has working for it.

If you are going to watch an "Escape Plan" movie, stick with the first one and give the sequel a wide berth...
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