Sylvester Stallone plays cops and robbers with Matthew Modine (Stranger Things) in the trailer for Lionsgate’s crime thriller, Backtrace. The film’s cast also includes people like Ryan Guzman (Heroes Reborn), as well as Meadow Williams (Den of Thieves), and seasoned character actor Christopher McDonald (whose recent roles include a turn on Ballers last year).
Written by Mike Maples and directed by Brian A. Miller, Backtrace picks up as a bank robbery gone wrong leaves mastermind MacDonald (Modine) with amnesia and locked up in a psychiatric prison ward. Years later, however, he is broken out by fellow inmate Lucas (Guzman) and a ward doctor named Erin (Williams), who then attempt to force his memory to come back, in the hope of finding the millions of dollars that MacDonald hid away before he was captured. Meanwhile, grizzled detective Sykes (Stallone) and equally “toughened” FBI agent Franks (McDonald) both try to hunt MacDonald done, with or without the other’s cooperation.
Lionsgate has now released both an official trailer and poster for Backtrace, ahead of its release in theaters and On Demand in December. You can check them out in the space below.
Miller has spent the past several years helming direct to video offerings like the Bruce Willis action-thrillers Vice and The Prince, and Backtrace appears to be a chip off the same cheesy genre fare block as those respective films, judging by the trailer. Of course, if high concept B-movies of that variety are your (not so) guilty pleasure, then Backtrace might well be worth checking out (silly amnesia-related plot points, cop drama cliches and all). Similarly, the cast is pretty decent for this one, especially by the standards of direct-to-video action flicks.
Stallone, of course, will be back on the big screen before Backtrace hits the scene next month. The actor returns as Rocky Balboa in next week’s sequel Creed II and is currently in the middle of reprising another one of his iconic roles (John Rambo, to be exact), in the now-filming Rambo: Last Blood, aka. Rambo 5. Sly doesn’t plan on retiring from the world of franchises after those movies either and is set to return to the Escape Plan property with Escape Plan 3: Devil’s Station next year, followed by (possibly) a return to his role as Barney Ross in The Expendables 4 - assuming that belated sequel eventually gets off the ground, anyway.
MORE: Creed II Video Introduces New Villain Victor Drago
Backtrace premieres in theaters and On Demand on Friday, December 14.
Source: Lionsgate