No Escape

What a difference a year can make for some filmmakers.  It was exactly one year ago this week that the filmmaking sibling duo of John Erick and Drew Dowdle unleashed As Above/So Below, a beyond incoherent and nearly unwatchable example of found footage horror.  This year, they bring No Escape, a thriller which manages to be incredibly tense for a good part of its running time.  It's well made, has some strong performances, and is dramatically effective.  The only knock against it is its limited scope of the situation at hand.

The ad campaign for the film seems to be trying to sell it as an action thriller, with Owen Wilson in the unlikely role of an action star.  In truth, the movie is a drama about Wilson's character trying to keep his entire family alive, which includes his loving wife (Lake Bell) and two young daughters (Sterling Jerins and Claire Geare).  There are certainly moments of action to be found, but the movie is surprisingly more concerned with the family trying to stay together and keep their spirits up than it is in putting its characters in gun battles and fistfights.  Wilson plays Jack Dwyer, a man originally from Texas who has taken a new job at a water treatment plant in an unspecified part of Asia. (The movie was filmed on location in Thailand, but it is never specified in the dialogue, most likely to help with the overseas box office.) No sooner does Jack and his family arrive that a political uprising tied to the company he's been sent to work for explodes on the streets.  With rioters and protesters storming the street and killing anyone associated with the company, Jack must protect his family and lead them to safety.

The opening 20 minutes or so of the film setting up the relationship between the family has a sweet quality to it that gets our support for these characters almost from the beginning.  There is also a man named Hammond (Pierce Brosnan), whom Jack meets on the plane to his new job and strikes up a friendship with during his first night before the uprising begins the next morning.  From that point on, No Escape becomes a breathless survival thriller that rarely slows down to let the audience catch their breath.  There is some excellently staged action sequences, with some using incredible camera tracking, following the actors with few if any edits.  The movie is also smart in not suddenly turning Wilson's character into some kind of unstoppable action hero once his family is in danger.  He is frightened, he gets hurt, but he keeps on pressing on for his family.  In other words, he's not Liam Neeson from the Taken films.  He has been written as being sympathetic and real, and never really does anything that we can't picture someone in his position doing in order to stay alive.

The film is centered solely on the family, and their efforts to get to safety.  This brings about the crucial flaw in the film, in that it does not give a voice to its Asian characters.  What do the innocent people think of the uprising that is happening all around them?  Most importantly, what do the rioters and protesters think?  We know that they are against the Western influence that is coming into their society with American companies setting up operations, but that's all we do know.  The violent protesters are treated like a mob who charge into the scene, shoot at our heroes and other extras, and occasionally get shot at by our heroes once in a while.  With a more even-handed approach that represented both sides of the situation, this could have been a truly great film, not just a good little late summer thriller.

Does this choice on the part of the filmmakers hold the movie back from what it could have been?  Most definitely.  But the movie that they have made is genuinely suspenseful, and has been made with quite a lot of skill.  There is a lot to admire here, from the performances to the camerawork and editing, which is able to keep up with the action without resorting to confusing or rapid edits.  Some critics of the film have said that it only shows white people being killed and shot at by the angry mob, but I also noticed some innocent Asians in the line of fire also.  That's why I wanted the movie to go broader with its topic.  I wanted to hear the side of these innocent local people who were caught in the middle of this tragedy in their homeland. 

If you can look past the narrow scope of the film, No Escape offers more than enough thrills and excitement that it works on that level.  Yes, this movie could have been better.  Lots of movies could.  But to me, the movie excelled at what it wanted to be - a white knuckle thriller.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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