Escape Plan: The Extractors (2019)

The third movie in Sylvester Stallone’s Escape Plan trilogy went straight to video despite being better than film #2, Escape Plan 2: Hades. Sly is back as security expert Ray Breslin, with WWE Superstar Dave Bautista and Jaime King returning too as Ray’s colleague Trent DeRosa and love interest Abigail Ross respectively. What’s it all about? Abigail is kidnapped and it’s got something to do with Ray’s previous business dealings. Uh-oh…

The movie was made in 17 days with a budget of “just” $3.6 million – it recouped more than half its budget back with DVD sales, coupled with loads more from digital sales around the world. Sly and Dave put on a good show, and the script is good. Not an Oscar winner but worth the adrenaline ride.

Leslie Felperin from theguardian.com says that there’s a deeper, political theme to the film, if you can see it: “It’s targeted at the economically dispossessed people who voted for Trump because of anger about what the Chinese were supposedly doing to the economy, and at the Chinese themselves. The ideological tension is never quite resolved, but this dynamic offers something to contemplate as the characters work through an entirely predictable combat.”