Convoluted and Contrived Nonsense

zardoz-13

Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe" director Damien Lee's adventurous epic "Breakout," starring Brendan Fraser, Dominic Purcell, and Ethan Suplee, amounts to a contrived outdoors thriller about a prison inmate who escapes from jail to track down the murderer responsible for terrorizing his family in the woods. Everything gets off to a bad start when our tree-hugging, conservationist hero, Jack Damson (Brendan Fraser of "The Mummy"), promises his young daughter, Jen (Holly Deveaux of "Mutant World"), that he will protect the welfare of trees. Seven years later, Jack leads an expedition of activists by canoes into the wilderness to prevent a powerful corporation from logging in the forest. These dissenters strap themselves to trees to thwart the company from cutting down the trees. Jack tangles with a big, beefy brute who had assaulted other protesters. During their rough and tumble fracas, Jack knocks the corporate goon down and he smacks his head against a log and dies. Jack goes to prison.

Some years later, the same corporation cuts a deal with Jack to take three years off his sentence, if he will serve as a consultant to the corporation. While all this convoluted nonsense is occurring to Jack and his family, two brother are trying to leave the country. Tommy Baxter (Dominic Purcell of "Prison Break") is driving his mentally defective brother Kenny (Ethan Suplee of "American History X") to Canada. Tommy believes that he has rented Kenny and he a cottage. As it turns out, Tommy's check has bounced, and the owner refuses to rent him the place. Tommy kills the owner with a high-powered rifle equipped with a telescopic sniper scope. Jen and Jack's son Mikey (Christian Martyn) are canoeing in the river when Tommy shoots the home owner. The man who took Jen and Mikey out to a weekend in the woods, Chuck (Daniel Kash of "Aliens"), was one of the protesters who worked alongside Jack. Chuck gets the children to flee into the woods before Tommy can kill them. Tommy beats up Chuck and threatens to kill him unless he calls for Jen and Mikey to come to him. He refuses. Meantime, when Jen escapes with her little brother, she drops her cell phone. Truly, it is amazing the kind of reception that this cellphone gets despite the plethora of trees and the general isolation of the wilderness. Jack's wife Maria (Amy Price-Francis), an attorney who has cooperated with the corporate suits to get Jack out of prison, strikes up a conversation with dim-witted Kenny and Kenny believes that Maria is his mother. This relationship evolves through the story. At one point, Chuck attacks Kenny, but he doesn't know about Kenny's mental challenges. The two struggled in unarmed, close-quarters combat, and Kenny kills Chuck.

Maria has agreed to help Jack during her latest prison visit to leave a car in the woods. Ironically, it seems that Jack is out in the open on a prison detail to clear up overgrown areas in the forest. Jack stashes his chainsaw so that it appears that he is operating it and takes off into the woods. Eventually, after driving an unknown number of miles, he finds his kids. Tommy is still in hot pursuit and Jack appropriates a sawed-off automatic shotgun. Of course, such a weapon at long range is not practical. Nevertheless, Tommy refuses to give up his pursuit of the family that he has vowed to kill. Our heroes almost catch a ride with a Park Ranger (Meegwun Fairbrother of "Beeba Boys"), but as the ranger is cranking up his truck, Tommy blows his head off! Mikey steps into a bear trap that the dead Park Ranger warned them about. Miraculously, Kenny shows up and shields the kids from Tommy. Tommy shoots Kenny. However, he is unable to extract Mikey from the trap until a dying Kenny intervenes.

"Breakout" is a genuinely forgettable film with lots of energy but no intelligence. Dominic Purcell plays a thick-skulled idiot out to protect his brother. Damien Lee has pared down the action to a little under 90 minutes. During the last visuals, we learn that Jack has been pardoned for his legal conviction.

score 3/10

zardoz-13 15 November 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3580769/