No Escape Review

7 out of 10

No Escape Cast:

Owen Wilson as Jack Dwyer

Lake Bell as Annie Dwyer

Pierce Brosnan as Hammond

Thanawut Kasro as Samnang

Chatchawai Kamonsakpitak as Prak

Sahajak Boonthanakit as Kenny Rogers

Tanapol Chuksrida as Krit

Jon Goldney as Jerry

Directed by John Erick Dowdle

Story:

While on a business trip, Jack Dwyer (Owen Wilson) and his family find themselves in the middle of a political revolution with mobs of angry protesters looking for blood, particularly from the American corporate infiltrators like Jack’s company.

Analysis:

By all accounts, this high concept thriller set in the Far East shouldn’t be any good, and maybe going in with fairly low expectations helped to appreciate it more than others might. Written, produced and directed by the Dowdle Brothers (Devil, Quarantine), No Escape starts off more like another movie based in Thailand, Juan Bayona’s The Impossible, in that it spends just the right amount of time introducing a family on a trip and the dynamics wherein before throwing them into turmoil. On their long flight, the family encounters Pierce Brosnan’s Hammond, an odd inebriated character, clearly one of those ex-pats that moves to that part of the world for reasons we may not want to know.

Even before we meet the Dwyers, we witness a scene of the country’s President being visited by a British government official and promptly being executed in a coup. (The original title for the Dowdles film was in fact “The Coup.”) It’s not quite clear why this event would trigger protesters to go after any Americans they find, although we learn later they’re angry about some of the things being done by Jack’s company in the territory. Thanks to the conference he’s attending, they’re well aware Jack is part of the problem making him a bigger target after seeing dozens of foreigners murdered by the mob.

The Dowdles are more than capable filmmakers in terms of taking what they’ve learned from their other genre films and creating something that feels real and therefore making it all the more terrifying. If you’ve never visited a third world country where crime runs rampant, than you might never experience the fear of being an American in a world where being an American is not exactly a favorable thing. The Dowdles deliver on a number of impressive set pieces that are able to surpass the seemingly low budget of the film. Even as you watch the scene where Wilson has to throw his daughters to his wife on the roof of another building (the high point of the trailers and ads), they create enough tension that you really might believe one might fall to their death.

While it’s somewhat hard to be convinced by Owen Wilson in this sort of serious role, since his acting skills don’t exactly have much in terms of range, Lake Bell makes up for it as his wife. Another thing I dug about No Escape is that once Pierce Brosnan was introduced, I automatically assumed he would turn out to be the film’s villain, but that wasn’t the case as his role is a lot more layered than that. It’s a fairly small role, but Brosnan brings the same amount of gusto he’s brought to other over-the-top roles like The Matador.

Not that No Escape doesn’t have it share of issues, and there’s a certain point in the second or third act where things start to get ridiculous, as they try to find new and more disturbing ways of terrorizing the Dwyers which goes into a few uncomfortable places. As the film goes along, it also has trouble sustaining the tension it achieved so well in the first 30 minutes.

The Bottom Line:

No Escape is far more effective as a vacation thriller than it should be, mainly because the filmmakers and cast do a better job creating tension and selling the premise than what we normally see in this thriller sub-genre.