Paul Haggis’ prison break thriller delivers a great final act but fails to make us care about the characters at all in the film’s preceding two acts essentially neutering the emotional impact of the film.
The film is finely acted, has a very intriguing premise in the reverse jail break, and is pretty clever in it’s progression of the escape plot. What doesn’t work is little to no characterization, characters doing things completely out of the blue with no validation, and a perplexing handling of the “did she do it” portion of the plot.
Speaking of the plot, it revolves around a young family that is torn apart when the mother, Lara, is abruptly arrested for the murder of a colleague she had recently a large argument with in the workplace. After the appeals process runs out, her husband, John, abruptly decides to break her out of prison. He tracks down an escape artist out of the blue and this sets in motion the steps he begins to take to try and free Lara from prison.
