Full disclosure: I’m a major fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The dude’s got an accent that makes every syllable sound cool, elevates any action sequence to superb heights and always comes across as the everyman, regardless of the scenario. After making the surprisingly fun The Last Stand earlier this year, Schwarzenegger teams up with Expendable co-star Sylvester Stallone in this new action flick that lacks all the fun, coherency and quality one desires from not just action films, but the majority of storytelling in general.

Ray Breslin feels like he has the best job on the planet; he breaks out of prisons in order to test if they’re secure or not. While conquering every prison he’s been assigned to, his newest mission (break out of an ultra-secret government prison) takes a dark turn when it’s revealed that there were ulterior motives for sending him to this prison. Realizing someone wanted to get rid of him, he decides to plan an escape plan (see what I did there?) with the help of fellow convict Emil Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger).  Together, the two will defy the odds, cause a bunch of property damage and maybe find a way to do all this without breaking a sweat or a hip.

We’ve had a parade of fun quality action flicks this year, with the aforementioned The Last Stand, and my personal favorite of the bunch, White House Down, showing how you can still have some cool explosions while maintaining a sense of humor. The second Expendables movies managed to achieve that balance with flair, but Escape Plan doesn’t even come close to such exciting heights thanks to it’s bizarrely inconsistent tone. The film has such a serious attitude for about 95 percent of the film, which hinders any attempt at the movies ability to communicate feelings of joy or awesomeness. Whenever it attempts to be lighthearted, it feels more out of place than a salad at Cici’s Pizza, with no sequence more out of place than the finale, which will likely cause more eye rolling than fist pumps with its mish-mash of madcap mayhem falling flat and unnecessary in this movie.

Schwarzenegger and Stallone do their best action work when they’re surrounded by an ensemble cast that can bounce off their larger than life personalities; that’s one reason those Expendables movies are so beloved.  Unfortunately, this movie loses it’s chances of creating other fun characters for the two leading actors to bounce off of since the duo is isolated in a remote prison for the majority of the film. To boot, most of the people in the prison with them are antagonists, rendering the possibility of any fun interactions in the film to be zero. Being left with just the two lead actors, they remain surprisingly charmless, perhaps dialing back their beloved big screen personas in order to appease the films darker tone. Poor choice; a couple of over the top Schwarzenegger one-liners might have been enough to save this mess.

People seem very fickle these days about what movie stars they like and don’t like these days, with Will Smith being despised post-After Earth and people like Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks (rightfully so) being beloved. With a horrible movie like this, both Stallone and Schwarzenegger are likely to have their careers and public image tarnished. Oh, this should’ve been a slam dunk; toss these two macho movie maniacs into an action-packed scenario and watch all the fun that ensures! Unfortunately, Escape Plan is a major failure, one that can’t conjure up anything remotely entertaining.