A few times during the movie there is a reference to Breslin's wife and family, including the picture in the desk and the stuff Breslin scratches into the prison table. Near the end, Warden Hobbes tells Breslin that he knows the truth about them. But then nothing more is said about them. Did I miss something? I was thinking that Breslin's family story was going to tie in to his being betrayed, but there was nothing.
shareThere is a scene where Breslin is telling Rottemeyer about his past. He explains he used to be a lawyer, and a man he put away escaped 3 years later and kept his promise to Breslin that he would "take away his family, his heart". From this, we can infer that he now makes sure prisons are escape proof so no one else ever suffers through the pain he went through.
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Ya, for all the things the movie was blatantly obvious about, they did hide these subplots cleverly enough that you have to think about it to get what it meant.
I'm going to guess it's a thing with different writers working on different parts of the script. Because this bit I thought was really well done. It was a mere table scene exposition that didn't go over two sentences. If you piece it together, great. If not, then it's no biggie.
So Breslin's family is dead??? Because of the guy that kept its promise to escape and kill Stallone's wife and Kids
shareThat's essentially the case. There's also the implication that Breslin chooses to "spend his life in prison" to punish himself for his family's death. This is something that pretty much everyone else sees in him and he apparently comes to terms with at the end of the film. Relatively elegant subtext for an action film.
"At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little."