NO ESCAPE
Director : John Erick Dowdle
Cast : Owen Wilson, Lake Bell, Pierce Brosnan, Sterling Jerins, Claire Geare
Genre : Drama/Thriller
Run Time : 103 mins
Opens : 27 August 2015
Rating : NC16 (Violence and Some Coarse Language)
A government will be
overthrown. Chaos will reign. Kids will be flung across rooftops. In this
action thriller, Owen Wilson plays Jack Dwyer, a water treatment engineer from
Austin, Texas. Together with his wife Annie (Bell) and young daughters Lucy
(Jerins) and Beeze (Geare), Jack travels to Southeast Asia, where they will
live as expatriates. On the flight there, they meet Hammond (Brosnan), a
friendly but enigmatic man who might know more than he’s letting on. As a
violent coup breaks out and their hotel is under siege, the American family is
caught in the thick of the bloodbath and it will take every ounce of
determination, every stroke of luck and all the help they can get if they want
to make it out alive.
No Escape is
directed by John Erick Dowdle, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother
Drew. The Dowdle brothers are primarily known for found-footage horror films,
including The Poughkeepsie Tapes, Quarantine and last year’s As Above, So Below. While this is a departure
for them in that it’s a straight-ahead thriller, there’s still a very
terrifying element to the story, which plays on the fears many of us have of
being caught in a dangerous situation in an unfamiliar locale. The nation in
which the story is set is never referred to by name and the characters
nebulously say “Asia” pretty often. It’s intended to be ambiguous, with
Thai-like script and Thai-sounding dialogue, plus the Vietnamese border being
across a strait. To avoid offending any sensibilities, great pains are taken to
not explicitly refer to the ostensibly fictional country by name, which
reminded this reviewer of those seasons of 24
where the terrorists are from “the Middle East” and nowhere more specific than
that. We’ll refer to the country as “Not!Thailand”.
While this tiptoeing does take one out of the movie a
little, this is actually a largely effective thriller. Straightforward and
nothing ground-breaking, but effective. Dowdle manages to create an authentic and
frightening sense of chaos with uncompromisingly brutal violence and this
reviewer found himself sucked into the plight of the family at the centre of
the story. Of course, it’s not supposed to matter so much if everyone else
dies, as long as our protagonist, his wife and daughters makes it out alive,
but that’s an exigency of films of this type. The film was shot on location in
Chiang Mai and other regions of Thailand, which does an excellent job of
doubling as Not!Thailand. In the first scene in which Jack realises something
has gone terribly wrong, he is stuck in the middle of a clash between the riot
police and rebels, and it is appropriately disorienting and scary. The film
mostly relies on the atmosphere of the location to do the work, but while the
action set pieces are not spectacular, they get the job done.
There are several traps that are very easy to fall into
with “family tries to survive ordeal”-type films. One is convenient ways out
where it seems like a guardian angel is working overtime – there are a few such
moments here, but it doesn’t neutralise the overall feeling of danger. The
other is putting kids in jeopardy as a way to manipulate the audience into
feeling something. Lucy and Beeze are caught in some pretty hairy predicaments,
but it really helps that the way Sterling Jerins and Claire Geare play them and
in the way they’re written, these feel like regular kids and not “movie kids”. Then
there’s the predictability of the “get trapped, just barely escape and get
trapped again” structure, but things move along quickly enough so that the
tension doesn’t fizzle out.
Owen Wilson isn’t an actor you’d expect to be headlining
an action thriller, and he hasn’t done a role of the type since 2001’s Behind Enemy Lines. He’s actually
excellent in this, mostly because he’s convincing as an everyman way out of his
element. If it were a Tom Cruise (as in War
of the Worlds) or a Brad Pitt (as in World
War Z) instead, it wouldn’t have as much impact when the character has to
draw on everything he has and become a badass to protect his family, because
it’s something that would come easier for a Tom Cruise or a Brad Pitt than for
an Owen Wilson.
Lake Bell, replacing the initially-cast Michelle
Monaghan, is also believable as a mother who has to be strong for her children
in spite of being terrified herself. Annie gets to pull off some impressive
physical feats while trying to evade the rebels and Bell, Wilson, Jerins and
Geare are quite easy to buy as a family unit. The scenes in which the parents
try to comfort and reassure their kids are well-written, which helps to balance
out the slightly more outlandish moments in the story. Pierce Brosnan as the
helpful, secretly badass stranger is excellent casting. He even gets to tip his
hat to the Bond role and when he explains what’s going on, as he eventually
must, it doesn’t sound like tedious exposition. Thai actor Sahajak Boonthanakit
adds some texture and much-needed levity to the proceedings as the requisite
“friendly local”, a driver with an amusing Kenny Rogers obsession.
No Escape often
looks like it was shot for TV, but what it lacks in polish, it makes up for in harrowing,
mostly credible scenarios that will have audiences asking themselves “what
would I do in a situation like this?” With Owen Wilson doing a really good job
as the “everyday hero” dad, a palpable sense of danger present throughout and
clever use of the already-existing environments and locations, No Escape is adequately riveting.
Summary: It doesn’t break the mould, but No Escape is a solid thriller with some edge-of-your-seats moments
and a central family that’s easy to root for.
RATING: 3.5 out of 5
Stars
Jedd Jong
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