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Escape Plan (Blu-ray)
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - Entertainment One Review written by and copyright: Samuel Scott (19th March 2014). |
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The Film
 ***This is a technical review only. For reviews on the movie from various critics, we recommend visiting HERE.*** Working as the escapee guinea pig in high security prisons, Ray Breslin (Stallone) is the world's foremost authority on structural security. When Breslin is enlisted by the CIA to test a top secret high-risk prison, he soon realises that the plan has gone awry when he is drugged and incarcerated in a master prison not only stocked up with the world’s most dangerous men, but also designed to be escape proof thanks to his years of research. With no hope of escape, Breslin finds himself at the mercy of the other inmates, brutal staff and a corrupt prison warden (Caviezel) driven to bury him forever. Breslin’s only seeming chance is to hook up with the dangerous and highly unpredictable political detainee Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger) in order to put what could be his final ESCAPE PLAN into action.
Video
Entertainment One have released "Escape Plan" onto Blu-ray in the original aspect ratio of 2.40:1. The transfer is 1080p, uses an AVC MPEG-4 codec, and looks pretty damn good. As appears to be the norm these days with movies that have a prison setting, there has been extensive colour grading throughout, especially with regards to the greys and blues. Despite this, blacks are inky and deep at all times, and there weren't any major issues of crushing. Details are generally very good, especially with objects in the background, but it's the first facial close-up of Arnie that really shows off the capabilities of Blu-ray. Unfortunately, details in the shadows do not fare quite as well, though is still perfectly acceptable. I did find that whilst the transfer is sharp, it lacks the wow factor that these bigger budget Hollywood actioners often give us. I noticed some minor aliasing (when Stallone awakes in his cell and the camera pans away from him), as well as some mild occasional banding, but I must state that the flaws in the transfer are minimal, and overall, this is an above average transfer that fans will be happy with. The disc is region B locked, and the feature runs 115:35.
Audio
Only a single audio track has been provided here; English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1. Holy. Crap. It's absolutely superb. There are lots of films out there set in prisons, and you get used to the usual sound effects, but here, they sound particularly great. Everything from prison riots, footsteps along concrete/metal, doors clanking, alarms going off... they all make exceptional use of the sound field, and yet never take away from the main focus of the scenes involved. Directionality is excellent, as is the depth of the track, whilst the volume levels of every effect/speech/score are perfect for the scene in question, never inconsistent, or overemphasised. Dialogue is clear at all times, and there are no signs of drop outs or background hiss. I'm going to throw two words out there that I do not get to use often. Reference. Quality. Subtitles are available in English HoH, and are optional.
Extras
We start the extras with an audio commentary by director Mikael Håfström and co-writer Miles Chapman. The pair do well here, and give us an informative commentary about the main aspects of the feature, with silent periods in the track lasting no more than about ten seconds. We get a good mix of technical details and anecdotes from the filming, but I found Chapman to be the better of the two, detailing various points in the plot and why he wrote them in that way, as well as the importance of particular lines of dialogue. Next up, we have a series of featurettes: - "Executing the Plan: the Making of Escape Plan" (22:13) - "Maximum Security: The Real Life Tomb" (21:56) - "Clash of the Titans" (15:34) "Executing the Plan" is a general making-of that features interviews with the main cast and crew including Sly and Arnie. We hear about the time scale, and gestation period of the project (several years), and how it eventually got off the ground. "Maximum Security" looks at the designs of maximum security prisons. Interviewees here include an architect and a social welfare professor, who tell us why maximum security prisons are designed in the way they are, and the materials used. This is a welcome addition to the disc, and gives a better insight into the real life prison system. The final featurette, "Clash of the Titans", is a look at the team-up of Sly and Arnie, who have been on course to headline a film together for thirty years ("The Expendables" movies don't count as Arnie merely cameos). Both actors express their thoughts well, even saying that sometimes the best ideas go awry, and this movie would be either boom or bust. A selection of 11 deleted scenes (9:09) with a play-all only option are next up on the extras menu. I imagine they were removed for pacing issues, as they aren't necessarily poor scenes - and even add to the story a little at times. It's interesting to see that in one scene, the special effects are unfinished, with nothing happening on the computer screens. The extras finish with a selection of start-up trailers (8:09): - "Need for Speed" (1:27) - "Pompeii" (2:14) - "Paranoia" (2:14) - "The Family" (1:59)
Overall
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