This review is of the TV-14 version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

All right it’s time for the next big thriller adventure with Ray and his security setup. I thought the first film was definitely a bit iffy on the premise of Ray getting captured so this one makes a lot more sense in that regard. The story actually thinks of a good reason to get Ray in there. For the most part it’s really just a redo of the first film in a lot of ways. The lower budget does allow them to make the prison a bit more sci-fi this time though which is nice.

The main character here is really Shu this time. He works for Ray and is really good at his job. He doesn’t get fired like another guy who messed up by trusting his computers too much. Unfortunately Shu gets roped into some family drama and is attacked by a bunch of thugs which leads him to being trapped inside of Hades. Hades is one of the most secure prisons of all time and appears to be run by the same villains as in the first film. This naturally puts Ray in a very dicey spot because now he has to find a way to get in there and save Shu. The only way…might be to let himself get captured. Never my favorite plan but if you have to do it, at least this is a slightly more reasonable approach.

That said, I still don’t like the plan for a variety of reasons. The biggest one is that the most likely outcome of this is that Ray will be murdered. When you enter a space like this that is run by villains who all want to murder Ray, there is no other real outcome here. He is going to be absolutely dominated right out of the gate. The whole film’s premise really only sticks if the villains keep Ray alive out of their misplaced pride in how he can never escape. This naturally never works but in a more realistic film, they would just murder him as soon as he’s in there. Especially since one of his workers is already there so they may team up.

Still, Ray handles himself as well as possible. He’s already looking a bit older in this one (Although not nearly as old as in the third film) but he can still fight when needed. He gets a quick action scene with his partner DeRosa early on which was really solid. DeRosa is a new character here who really comes in handy. He’s been in the game for a very long time and has evidently helped Ray in the past. He’s another tough guy who beats up everyone in his way. These films have no shortages of these kinds of characters. He’s not quite up to par with the guy from the first film but he will suffice. I always enjoyed seeing the meanwhile scenes away from the jail with DeRosa doing his thing.

As for Shu though, he’s a solid main character. He puts up with a lot of torture and beatings at the jail in order to find his way out but also to help his cousin. Shu is a strong fighter and does well in the prison’s underground tournament bracket. If the fights were the only thing he would have to deal with then I think he would have gotten out just fine. Of course, you can’t expect anything to be all that fair down here. The warden certainly doesn’t appreciate this guy and Shu has a massive target on his back since his cousin was already the main person in harm’s way before. Even just helping him doesn’t do wonders for Shu’s social cred.

Again you do have to suspend some disbelief throughout the film for how the heroes learn about the exits and such. They memorize guard walking patterns, steal objects, etc. It all relies on their making some friends here and all of the guards being inept enough not to notice them taking things. I also question how exact the patterns would really be for any company. What about people cutting out early to smoke, staying a bit late, walking a different route, etc. The fact that everyone does things the same way all the time is super unrealistic to me because I feel like that basically never happens in any job. Whether it be public or private, people tend to have a lot of variance in what they do.

You could say that the jail warden just made sure people would stick to the script every time but that would make him not look so good. If anything a jail is the exact place where you would want extra variance the whole time. You want to throw the opponent off your trail and everything. So I’m skeptical but I always am for films like this one. The important thing is that you’re kept entertained though and the film did pull that off. So it’s still positive overall.

I take some points away for the general grit and violence of the film though. It’s nothing terrible or anything like that but still enough to be noticeable. it’s pretty much inevitable for any of these films where the heroes are stuck in a prison because the whole point is to show off how cruel and tough the warden is. It’s harder to show that without adding a bunch of scenes where the warden is dominating right?

Overall, Escape Plan 2 is a decent movie. I won’t call it great or anything though. It definitely does feel like it’s just copying the first film to a large extent. I really enjoyed the martial art fight scenes but the general atmosphere of the jail wasn’t great. Naturally the characters are getting beaten up and effectively tortured the whole time without any real way out. It’s definitely a real dark place to be in and the more you think about it, the rougher it would get. If you’re looking for a random action film to pass some of the time by though, you can’t really go wrong with this one.

Overall 6/10