The Escapist

THE ESCAPIST (2009) - Mar. 15, 2011 (S)
Blarg.  About a aging convict who starts planning his escape after finding out that his daughter has become a junkie, this movie squandered its above-average cast (including Brian Cox, Damian Lewis and Joseph Fiennes) -- none of the characters are particularly interesting or even very well developed, which makes a great actor like Cox feel pretty much completely wasted.  Director Rupert Wyatt also makes the somewhat disastrous choice of cutting back and forth between the preparations and the escape itself, which robs the escape of any real momentum (any time you start getting into it -- whammo, back to the prison) and which makes the prison stuff feel like wasted time (the surfeit of bland, underdeveloped characters also makes the prison stuff a bit of a tough slog).  The prison stuff does improve a bit towards the end (there's a couple of pretty great scenes between Cox and Lewis) but it's kind of too late by then.  Then there's the "hey, guess what??  It was all a dream!" twist ending, which pretty much just made me want to punch the movie right in the nose.  *1/2