Breakout Reviews

Sweet-tempered and easily dismissed, BREAKOUT is assembly line fare about a lad's trust in his father, an inventor. Dispensing good clean inanity, it offers kiddie kick-boxing, lummox villains, and homilies about teamwork. Gizmo-fancying Joe Hadley (J. Evan Bonifant) admires his father, Zack (Robert Carradine), an engineer involved in a top-secret project for investor Larry Hwang (James Hong). Already concerned about industrial theft, Zack grows short-tempered at Joe's efforts to peek in his basement workshop. Unbeknownst to Zack, Larry is a point man for an oil conglomerate determined to thwart Zack's breakthrough, a super battery for powering electric cars. Meanwhile, Joe makes the schoolyard acquaintance of two foster kids, Maggie (Breanne Grant) and Derrek (Jerome Silvano), who teach him self-defense and the spirit of cooperation. To stymie Zack's progress, Larry hires Stewart (Chris Chinchilla) and his two rogues to kidnap Joe (and friends) in order to force Zack to cease his experimentation. Having proved themselves troublesome by beating up their kidnappers, the young friends are released by Stewart and his buddies, who are relieved when Zack agrees to abandon his project. Playing upon Zack's financial woes, Larry offers to "temporarily" buy the patent to his battery. When Joe and his pals scientifically retrace their steps to the kidnappers' hangout, they discover Larry's involvement. Joe convinces his dad not to cede his inventor's rights, but Larry threatens to blow up the entire Hadley family. In the interim, Maggie and Derrek alert the police, and they arrest Larry's gang. Ultimately, Zack perfects his super battery and becomes Maggie and Derrek's new foster father. It's all so neatly resolved. Calumny is banished; orphans are adopted; the lesson of working together is instilled in the young target audience. This eco-friendly escapade hits its intended marks in a formulaic fashion. As a mild diversion for attention-deficit tykes, it's serviceable without ever being outstanding. Once again, a little child shall lead them (thus, one precocious David outsmarts the shrewdest legal and illegal efforts of a petroleum Goliath). Still, grade-schoolers will cheer as their onscreen peers knock about bad guys with martial artistry. (Violence.)