Stallone reprises his role as Ray Breslin, but he’s no longer the one who gets imprisoned then attempts to break out like in the first movie. This time, he is a security expert who says there is no prison from which he could not escape from. A member of his team of operatives, Shu Ren (Huang Xiaoming of “Ip Man 2”), was kidnapped along with his cousin, Yusheng (Chen Ta), and kept inside a high tech prison called Hades, which is in a secret location, fully automated and can even change shape and structure.
Breslin then hatches an elaborate plan to get Shu out of this impenetrable jail fortress. Truth to tell, it’s Chinese actor Huang Xiaoming who comes out as the lead in this movie. Most of the scenes, specially in the movie’s first half, show him figuring out how to get out of Hades and trying to survive prison life fighting with other prisoners in fight scenes where he gets show his superb skills in Wu-Xia.
The film is bankrolled by Chinese producers, as shown in the credits, and it’s clear that it’s aimed to attract Huang’s fans in China where he is a big star in his own right. In fairness, he’s quite impressive in his acrobatic action sequences. Stallone is shown mostly in his Atlanta office and his presence is really felt only in the film’s second half as he needs to get inside the prison in person to be able to help Shu get out.
But even he cannot help save this movie from being such a big bore. It just fails in getting our interest with the plot jumping all over the place and the characters failing to get our sympathy. The whole incoherent exercise actually seems so pointless and you’d really wonder what made Stallone agree to do this at all. No wonder this was not released in theaters abroad but only on a direct streaming basis.
The cinematography is so bad, mostly used with a shaky handheld camera. Some episodes of TV crime-action dramas like “NCIS”, “Blindfold”, “Arrow” are even better executed than this. This shambles of a movie really sucks as it’s not even as suspenseful as the first one. Even the CGI showing explosions are so badly done. The acting is also just so bad.
Dave Bautista is billed prominently in this movie as Stallone’s main co-star, but he really has a very short exposure in the movie as Trent DeRossa, Stallone’s mercenary friend. He has a better role as Jodie Foster’s assistant in “Hotel Artemis” which is also showing now. Also wasted is Jesse Metcalfe, who started prominently as the young stud in “Desperate Housewives” but whose career didn’t prosper at all.
