No Escape (2015) - Review

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

ON THE one hand, 2015 thriller No Escape offers an extremely tense and often impressive action film buoyed by top performances from a leading pair more commonly associated with comedy.

Yet on the other, this fifth collaboration between writer-director siblings John and Drew Dowdle shows scant regard for storytelling complexity and wastes a premise that should have been ripe with possibility for some interesting social commentary.

Loosely inspired by John’s 2006 trip to Thailand, which coincided with a peaceful military coup, this sees Owen Wilson playing Jack Dwyer, a Texan water company executive who’s dragged his family – wife (Lake Bell) and two young daughters – out to an unnamed east Asian country just as it finds itself in the grip of a violent coup.

The kicker for the Dwyers, however, is that the coup is a protest against American meddling in their country and involves the systematic and cold blooded killing of every foreign national the perpetrators can find.

Pierce Brosnan crops up as a boozy fellow ‘businessman’ who is more street savvy than first appears. While the increasingly desperate situation invites the Dwyers to resort to their base instincts to survive as their lives rest on a kill or be killed race for the border.

As mentioned, No Escape works well as a taut action movie where the safety of its principal characters is constantly in doubt amid some extremely well choreographed set pieces. This is never better realised than during a sequence in which Wilson’s father is forced to throw his children from one rooftop to another in a last ditch bid to get them to some kind of temporary safety.

But the action is relentless, seldom letting up to offer much room for exposition or character growth even though both Wilson and Bell do extremely well to make their characters feel likeable as believable victims of circumstance.

Indeed, it’s good to see Wilson flexing his action muscles in a rare physical outing for him - even though he’s not averse to more thoughtful roles outside of his preferred comedy zone (as anyone who has seen several of his more soulful, albeit light hearted turns in Wes Anderson’s movies can attest).

Bell is also a suitably feisty heroine with a lot of range - an early pre-coup meltdown nicely realising the mixed emotions of her mother who is desperate to keep her family together even though she doesn’t like the direction life has taken them.

The Dwyer kids are suitably scared without being bratty or annoying and Brosnan is clearly having fun with his Cockney take on James Bond, relishing the opportunity to bring more shade to another government ‘killer’.

But while his character offers insight into the bigger picture that has provoked the coup, it also brings into sharper focus the main problems with the film.

That is to say that, much like Brosnan’s character, the film feels morally bankrupt and somewhat cavalier.

It turns out that it’s Brosnan’s role to destabilise poor countries and throw them into debts they can’t pay, thereby allowing British and American governments to exploit their resources and foresake their people. In this film’s case, it’s water. But any natural resource is up for grabs.

It’s here that the Dowdles’ movie had the capacity to shine a light on a problem that feels socially relevant - at least in the way that some of the world’s poorest people are facing displacement because of the activities of the richest nations.

Alas, apart from paying lip service to that idea, the film offers no voice to the rebels - casting them, instead, as bloody despots that show no mercy and giving them nothing to say beyond using their guns or bats. There’s the odd sympathetic local who offers the Dwyers shelter or the use of a mode of transport. But even they are given little to do beyond looking mystical.

Instead, the film resorts to simplistic gestures - Brosnan’s character getting the comeuppance his wider involvement deserves (no matter how brave his actions with regard to the Dwyers), while the Dwyers themselves just about make it out alive.

There’s no attempt to delve into the social repercussions of the coup for its country’s wider inhabitants, or show any compassion or sense of loss for the many, many people who are summarily slaughtered - something that nods towards the brothers’ horror roots (they have previously directed As Above, So Below and Devil).

The overall result is a film that quickens the pulse and raises the heart rate on a will they or won’t they survive basis, but which leaves a strangely unpleasant taste if you choose to delve into its dubious politics and non-existent morality.

Certificate: 15

Running time: 1hr 43mins