Tom Russo

In one amusing bit of dialogue, Stallone and Schwarze-negger kid each other about being smarter than they look. For a little while at least, we thought we might be able to say the same about Escape Plan.

Not that the movie’s various shortcomings are all on Moore. British genre director and co-writer Johannes Roberts (“Storage 24”) gives her nothing but trite drama to work with in setting up the story, and an overload of distracting, reductive prattle once she hits the water.

Stallone and De Niro simply don’t generate enough combative spark to make this anything more than an amiably mediocre diversion.

It’s clear To is striving to keep the action gripping and creative. Modestly inspired is more like it.

You’ll have to be satisfied with a modest assortment of energetically comic moments here, because the story sure isn’t a reason to catch this encore, and neither are who-asked-for-’em cast additions such as Ken Jeong.

First-time director Nick Ryan isn’t entirely up to the challenge in The Summit, but he does deliver some dramatic and visual highs in the attempt.

Trouble is, the movie’s dopiness isn’t in fact something you can get past. “American Assasinine” is frequently more like it.

But when there's such a lighthearted, boys-at-play manner about the story's established aspects, it creates an odd disconnect from the World War II tolerance lessons that the filmmakers seek to add. War and persecution are bad, kids - except when it's all in good fun.

Cooper swaggers as convincingly as always, the food-prep montages are mesmerizing, and we even get a couple of solid twists and an education on the sous-vide trend.

Pixels may feel flatter to kids of the ’80s than it does to moviegoers too young to have known Pac-Man from Ant-Man.

Alba, meanwhile, is again ridiculously shoehorned into a comedy gig, although she does have an amusing opening bit spying while nine months pregnant. If only diaper bomb gags weren't the inevitable follow-up.

Monster Trucks might not be a complete lemon, but it’s hardly cherry.

It’s tough to stay focused on the provocative bits when soapy talk of teenage yearning and angst keep making us snicker.

The cast does capable work, but you’ll wish the movie concentrated more on the comedy, which has some zing, rather than the straighter elements, which quickly start to drag.

If only there were more genuine rah-rah fun involved, instead of just endless, thudding, seen-it-all-before mayhem.

In the end, the movie leaves us stuck with unmoving drama and increasingly numbing carnage.

There’s nary an honorable death that resonates, although we do get some creative visual perspectives on enthusiastically digitized brutality. But wasn’t the game good for that already?

The repartee, as ever, is weak. Even with all the extra layers of digital detail, it’s still tough to keep these four straight. And the CG characters’ slimy rendering and motion-capture expressiveness could go down with “The Polar Express” as a study in inadvertent, technologically misguided screen creepiness. Wackier would have been OK, guys — it’s the Ninja Turtles.

As tiresome as the relentless, indulgent inscrutability and lack of story momentum can be, it says something for the movie’s visceral power that there isn’t an urge to quit on it.

The plot doesn’t take clever turns, the visual thrills aren’t all that thrilling, and you’re ultimately left to get your heist-movie kicks elsewhere.

This last angle had us thinking back to “Risky Business,” as did the Chicago setting and the reveling gone off the rails. Here, though, there’s no edge to the wildness, nothing memorable.

Eckhart doesn’t really do any of that classic grunting as Frankenstein 2.0, but maybe he should have.

Despite a few diverting moments and some ambitiously dramatic themes, this one is simply too uneventful and too populated by thinly sketched characters to keep its target audience engaged.

The film’s lone strength is the fleeting dramatic scenes offering a little back story — and pathos — on Rafe’s home life with his sweetly understanding single mom (Lauren Graham, who you’d guess wouldn’t have bothered otherwise).

Audiences are going to want to brace themselves, too – for a movie that refuses to recognize when it’s going too far, with its wince-eliciting jokes about jailhouse rape in particular.

Funny about retribution, though - it's a tricky thing to make time for when you've still got mutant zombie hordes after you. The real premise turns out to be a busy rehash of the first movie's story line.

How funny that Pryce, a tweedy Brit playing a bad guy, should be the one person doing anything remotely heroic for this dud.

Unfortunately, Mann also leans on ill-fitting story elements that he might easily and smartly have avoided, and the movie’s rhythms and credibility pay for it.