Escape Plan 3: The Extractors

This time out, we’re mostly concerned with revenge. Ray Breslin (Sly Stallone) wants revenge against the villain, when a rescue mission goes horribly, and homicidally wrong. Said villain (played by Devon Sawa) has revenge against Breslin on his mind, too that is only slowly revealed. A couple of martial-arts guys (Jin Zhang and Harry Shum Jr.) have their own similar motives for getting involved in the overly cluttered plot concerning the kidnapping of the pretty daughter of a HK businessman (whom Sawa also has a personal grudge against). Jin Zhang is the girl’s ex-lover and former bodyguard, Shum Jr. is her ineffective current bodyguard, and they don’t especially like one another. Meanwhile, Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson, Jaime King, and Dave Bautista briefly reprise their roles from previous instalments as Breslin’s crew members. Daniel Bernhardt plays one of Sawa’s henchmen. Veteran Asian-American character actor Russell Wong is given the scant role of the HK businessman/father.

Star Sly Stallone was promoting this 2019 sequel from director John Herzfeld when he trashed the previous “Escape Plan 2: Hades” as one of the lousiest productions he’d ever been a part of. Shot before that film had even been released, this one’s frankly not that much better. Scripted by series scribe Miles Chapman with an apparent assist by Herzfeld (the slumming writer-director of “2 Days in the Valley”, “15 Minutes”, and “Reach Me” co-starring Stallone), this is some weak-arse “Fast and the Furious” franchising wannabe. It’s shamelessly lazy, cynical, overly cluttered and confusing.

Plot-wise it resembles one of those later “Saw” sequels where it’s overly complicated and mechanical bullshit that keeps you at arm’s length not caring about anyone or anything, and not being able to follow much of a damn thing partly because you don’t care. It’s eye-rolling stuff. I’d much rather watch Jin Zhang (AKA Max Zhang, who has been on the verge of breaking out as a star for a while now) and Harry Shum Jr. in something else, preferably something with a lot more time for martial-arts action (Chinese-Puerto Rican Shum has a dance background, not martial-arts however). They’re good in action when called upon here (enough to boost the film’s score ever-so slightly from the previous film), but they’re not quite called upon enough to make the film anywhere near up to par. In fact, as much as it’s nice to have some martial-arts to liven things up a bit, it’s once again poorly shoe-horned into the film, even pandering to the Asian demographic. Shoe-horned or not, the fight between Jin Zhang and veteran C-grade henchman Daniel Bernhardt is better than anything in the previous film. Bautista gets called in earlier this time, but ends up doing about as much as last time – sweet bugger all. There’s too many other characters to contend with, so he’s sitting on the sidelines for much of the film. That said, he does wield the most MDK gun I’ve ever seen, so he’s got that going for him. On the downside, his one big fight scene sees him take a beating for the majority before having a swift victory. That’s not so fun.

50 Cent barely even has a walk-on this time, and if he was paid anything more than his name suggests, then he’s practically stealing. Jaime King’s participation is also fairly brief because Sly’s idea of an ensemble cast franchise is to have him do most of the heroics with a little bit for the flippy action guys to keep overseas audiences half-way interested. To be honest, the only person who even remotely delivers outside of the martial-arts department is former teen hunk Devon Sawa as the chief villain. He’s actually more than serviceable in an otherwise cheap-arse enterprise, though the film pulling a tactic with his character that calls back to a certain third film in another action movie franchise is worthy of a groan or two. I know they wanted to wrap the franchise up in a nice neat bow perhaps (Unless it made money, then they’d come out with a fourth one for sure), but this ain’t it, chief.

A billion production company credits lead off this cinematic Ponzi scheme that offers the barest of minimum in anything else. Some nice martial-arts here and there, plus a solid villain performance by Sawa, and absolutely nothing else of value. More Jin Zhang might’ve helped make it a bit more tolerable, more Dave Bautista might’ve helped more.

Rating: D+