No Escape

Released:  August 26^th, 2015

Rated:  R

Distributor:  The Weinstein Company

Starring:  Owen Wilson, Lake Bell, Sterling Jerins, Claire Geare, Pierce Brosnan

Directed by:  John Erick Dowdle

Written by:  John Erick Dowdle, Drew Dowdle

Personal Bias Alert:  likes thrillers, dislikes cheap tricks to evoke sympathy

7.8 of 10

            The harrowing thriller No Escape is bound to be divisive.  It’s a technically astounding, borderline xenophobic film, your enjoyment of which will depend entirely on how much you can stomach sustained fear and inadvertent racism.  The film would be easier to condemn if you could detect a whiff of actual social politics, but the unfortunate setting of an unnamed Asian country falling into a civil war seems to be little more than a simplistic surrounding for a narrowly focused action thriller.

            The film is only concerned with the survival of one American family, the Dwyers, led by Owen Wilson’s Jack and Lake Bell’s Annie.  The couple have two young daughters who’re old enough to run but young enough to make untimely demands like needing a bathroom.  Evoking sympathy for this group is almost as easy as a paint by the numbers kit, and while No Escape does tread into emotionally manipulative territory, Wilson and Bell always manage to yank it back to something resembling reality.  This film probably doesn’t deserve their talents, but it allows them to show off skills the two traditionally comedic actors haven’t flexed in some time.  They get down and dirty with the action, pulling off stunts and pitching the unending peril with great finesse, but it’s the quiet moments between the two, the exchanged glances and pantomimed plans, that really sell their concerns and desires.  Their world has been quickly whittled down to death or survival, and all they want is to get their family out intact.  The lengths they are forced to go to have a great effect on their relationship, and watching these subtle changes play out between two great actors elevates No Escape far above what was likely on the page.

            The script, written by brothers Drew and John Eric Dowdle, is an admittedly well-paced piece, if a bit too stuck in genre conventions.  The two previously made last year’s horror misfire As Above, So Below, a piece that took a great setting and fumbled the execution.  Their genre contributions fare much better here, coming up with a solid if uninspired cavalcade of set pieces for the Dwyers to survive.  The script is still clearly what holds the film back, though.  There’s too many half-hearted attempts at humor and one incredibly ridiculous action movie moment, but it’s that darn setting that’ll really have you twitching with discomfort.  The decision to put their family survival story in a foreign land and have them targeted simply for being American had to have been made early on, and while the brothers did write in a vague explanation for why the natives hate the Americans, it never feels like more than a half-baked write-off.  Now, if they had completely ignored this point or made every single native a violent revolutionary, then the film would’ve quickly turned into an undefendable piece.  As is, it feels like an unfortunate decision by two guys who didn’t understand the blowback such dismissive treatment would evoke.

            Luckily, this unfortunate decision is drowned out by the sustained action, which throws you from one horrifying situation to another.  You quickly form an emotional bond with the Dwyers, and watching them go through the wringer is an absorbing, tiring experience.  John Eric Dowdle finally shows a bit of pizazz in his direction of the various action scenes, alternatively presenting them with gritty realism and an immaculately smooth style.  Everything in these scenes from the choreography to the sound design is spot-on, with extra props going to editor Elliot Greenberg for putting it all in perfect little places. 

            No Escape does so much right, and yet one uncomfortably poor decision during development nearly derails the whole thing.  Whether the film has crossed that ever-shifting socio-political line is for you to decide, but at least watching it will challenge you to draw a line in the sand.  You might even enjoy the ride while you’re at it.

Other Notes:

Ø  Pierce Brosnan is sort of wasted.

Ø  The camerawork is rather shaky, but it was never too much for me.  Understand that I am also seemingly immune to motion sickness.

Ø  This film understands that it’s much more disturbing to watch a mother shielding her child’s eyes than to see all the mayhem around them.