The Weinstein Company
When I think of great action movies about people saving their families from disaster, quite a few spring to mind. Often they are about super-competent people coming back from retirement like Taken, but it’s harder to think of ones about regular people. That may be an indictment but it may also just simply be that nobody’s really done it well. Even San Andreas had Dwayne Johnson being a superman rescue worker. Of course, that’s not the problem here; it’s the antagonist, the evil “Asian Rebels.”
No Escape comes from director John Erick Dowdle, who also co-wrote it. Owen Wilson stars as Jack Dwyer, the father of a small family who’s taking them to another country to start over after his business failed. Don’t worry, that will only barely get mentioned so it can’t be that important. Jack and his wife Annie (Lake Bell) and two girls (Sterling Jerins and Claire Geare) are off to “Southwest Asian Country,” which appears to be Thailand. That may be just a coincidence because the director was inspired by his time in Thailand and that the movie was also filmed there. But the name of the country is never mentioned, which is weird, because they show it on a map where Cambodia actually is located. Again though, don’t worry! It’s barely relevant.
Jack and the Dwyer crew have arrived just in time for a virulently anti-foreigner coup, where the rebels are shown killing people quite indiscriminately. Later on we get a few hints of mild complexity about motives and context, but it’s better merely to think of them as “angry people with a weird language.” At times they are helped by Hammond, an older man played by Pierce Brosnan who gets a few, very few, opportunities to kick ass. Because it’s really about the survival of this family without any unusual training, doing extraordinary things to stay one step ahead of the rebel forces. After that, it’s just a series of action set pieces, usually quite tense, some clever, some banal.
Perhaps if the context was better integrated into the movie instead of “these guys are attacking us” it might serve as a better political statement that seems mostly shoehorned in at this point. Now these actions scenes are pretty well done, very brutal and mostly realistic, with the exception of the family escapades. It’s harrowing enough that it doesn’t seem cartoonish, but it all kind of feels empty at the end. A lot of “Well, so?” in response to scenes. As for the actors, they were pretty decent. Owen Wilson and Lake Bell are better known for dryly humorous roles in comedies, so it’s an interesting departure to see them here.
But it works for those two, and Pierce Brosnan works even when saying some quite silly or melodramatic lines. The group had a pretty good dynamic, seeming like they could be a real family. I think there are lot of pieces that work here, even if it doesn’t add up to a particularly memorable movie. I expect most critics will just pan this movie in total, but it wasn’t without any merit. As I said, the action was good, if repetitive, and the family dynamic worked from an acting perspective, even if it didn’t from a writing one. It’s a decent diversion, but it’s very violent so keep that in mind. To be honest though, I preferred the bizarre stoner action violence of last week’s American Ultra a lot better, and that wasn’t even that great.
It’s odd because the movie certainly had locals that weren’t involved in the coup, but they have no personalities so it’s hard to see the “foreigners” as anything other than cliched evil people. Kind of a problem, but perhaps that won’t matter with our old buddy “system racism” on the case. I suppose most people will just ignore it instead.
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