Breakout (2023 Written Review)

 

Breakout

Cast:Louis Mandylor, Brian Krause, Kristos Andrews

Writers: Devanny Pinn, Robert Thompson, Brandon Slagle

Director: Brandon Slagle.

While visiting his son in prison, a retired black opps member becomes unwillingly involved.  When a crazed criminal takes hostages at the establishment in this new feature from director Brandon Slagle(House of Manson and The Dawn)

Vincent Baros(Kristos Andrews) is incarcerated after he killed a police officer in a heist gone wrong, but it’s pretty clear that the man he shot was actually pretty shady but Im not quite sure how corrupt he was but never the less.  Vincent is now in jail  and serving time for his crime.  After that we meet Vincent’s father Alex Boros (Louis Mandylor) who has hired a private dick to track down his son.  After I learned later that this guy was like ex C.I.A. I had to ask why did he need to hire any help? He could have  found his son himself.  Anyways, the P.I. tells Alex that Vincent is in prison and after they both reunite, Vincent still can’t forgive his dad for not being there while his mom was dying. If we was doing some work for the government as their assassin.  I’m pretty sure not leading any threat to his family is a pretty damn good reason to stay away.  I also feel that if Max did work for a secret section of the Government.  He could have easily found his son and got him out of prison before he even ever got in. 

 

However on this faithful day Max manages to visit his son on the one day a criminal mastermind stages a takeover of a maximum security prison.  While visiting the parole board Max Chandler(Brian Krause) gets security guards to set bombs everywhere, kill some staff members and take hostages at the center.  I would have loved to have seen a scene or two on how he could convince anyone to go along with his plan.  When I saw the concept of taking over Alcatraz  by Ed Harris in Michael Bay’s The Rock.  I thought it was a little farfetched but it still worked for the concept of the movie.  For Breakout, it’s best you don’t think about it too much and just accept it.  While Max is roaming the halls looking for his son,and Vincent is being taking in by Max’s philosophy on why he is doing this.  We also have Tom Sizemore as head police negotiator Chaz Coleman.  This is one of the last roles he did and he did a good job in this film. I always liked him in movies like Natural Born Killers, Saving Private Ryan and True Romance. He will be missed.

 

The movie for the most part is well paced and the acting is solid throughout.  Brandon Slagle does a great job at staging action scenes and while some of it incorporates some shaky cam style.  It’s not nearly as bad as some other movies and a lot of it is really well edited   Brian Krause does a good job as the lead villain but I never found him to be much of a threat because I was never sure what his end goal was with this plan.  He wanted to expose the flaws of the prison system, but it wasn’t like he was an innocent victim either.  I wish he had some sort of large scale attack planned for the city.  I mean if he can get explosives into a prison, he can surely get them on other Government owned buildings    

 I also liked Louis Mandylor and Kristos Andrews in this flick and thought they displayed a good amount of tension throughout.  Except I thought their reunion near the end was a little rushed and it should have happened earlier in the feature.  At about 85 minutes, Breakout is a fine enough action feature that would have done well back in the late 90’s. It's nothing super spectacular but you wont hate your time watching it.

It gets a solid ** and 1/2  *'s  out of Five *’s  from me.