Review: Despite a solid cast, haphazard comedy 'The Escape of Prisoner 614' misses the mark

Review: Despite a solid cast, haphazard comedy ‘The Escape of Prisoner 614’ misses the mark

By Noel Murray

April 26, 2018 1:30 PM PT

A handful of fine actors are wasted in the limp comedy “The Escape of Prisoner 614,” a period picture that never figures out exactly what it’s spoofing. Writer-director Zach Golden stages the action in picturesque locations, but his film’s modest charms can’t overcome its weak, aimless jokes.

Jake McDorman and Martin Starr play Thurman and Jim, two bumbling deputies working in the sedate town of Shandaken, N.Y., nestled in the Catskills. When their grumpy boss, Sheriff Wilson (Ron Perlman), fires them due to a lack of crime, they try to get their jobs back by tracking a fugitive.

The escapee, Andre (George Sample III), is a civil rights advocate falsely accused of murder. The racist component to Andre’s imprisonment is relevant to the plot, which is set in the ’60s, but Golden doesn’t do much with it beyond a little mild tongue-clucking about systemic injustice.

Similarly, while the mountain backdrops look pretty, nobody in the cast seems to have researched how people from the mid-Hudson region talk, since they’re all doing what sounds like twangy West Texas accents. Perhaps that’s because this film is staged as a quasi-western … although Golden doesn’t exactly enliven or comment on the genre, either.

Of course, comedy doesn’t have to be purposeful, so long as it’s zingy and funny. But while “The Escape of Prisoner 614” has the right cast for a good old-fashioned romp, this movie barely moves.

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