No Escape

Review By: John Delia

Relentlessly brutal, the movie No Escape takes the audience into a different kind of survival. Just as violent and all-consuming as the tsunami film The Impossible, the only difference comes with humans killing humans instead of nature. The momentum builds so quickly that you’ll find yourself glued to the electrifying run for your life story on the screen. Your hands are grasping the arm rests and that drink you have in the cup holder is getting watered down by the ice melting. You have become a witness to an emotional bond between a family that will not give up and with no end in sight and you just turn away from them until the final curtain.

After leaving his company in Texas for a more lucrative position in Southeast Asia, Jack Dwyer (Owen Wilson), his wife Annie (Lake Bell) and his two young girls Lucy (Sterling Jerins) and Beeze (Claire Geare) start their first leg in Jack’s relocation.  On the airplane they become acquitted with Hammond (Pierce Brosnan), a rugged guy returning to his job in the same area where they are staying.  At the airport, Hammond gets picked up by his best friend Kenny Rogers (Sahajak Boonthanakit) and they offer the Dwyer’s a ride to their hotel.

The next morning, Jack goes to a local Asian market area looking for an American newspaper.  As he is about to leave, he sees a conflict breaking out between Police and dissident protestors wanting to kill all foreigners.  Caught up in the melee, he’s now on the run and needs to get to his family and assure their safety.  When the going gets extremely violent, their only chance comes from Hammond and Rogers.

The film goes on from there holding nothing back in a visual display of killing and explosive violence.  Director John Erick Dowdle, who also wrote the script with his brother Drew (Quarantine), start off the film with a bang and give their audience a short break getting to know the main characters. Then begins one of the most white knuckle bloody films I’ve seen in a long while. They engulf the audience with visuals of merciless executions, killing innocent bystanders and ripping apart buildings to show their strength as they attempt to take control of the city.

Not until the third act does Dowdle finally let the audience catch their breath, relax in their seat and realize what they just witnessed. The first forty minutes gives the feeling that you are there right in the action pushing for the Dwyers to escape their ordeal.  Just when you take that last sip of your drink and a bite of popcorn, the momentum starts to build again and Dowdle shows how vicious it can really be.

The acting is critical in a film like this and if you happen to have seen the movie The Impossible where a family on vacation gets engulfed in a tsunami and has to fight for their lives against nature, it’s that kind of trauma.  In No Escape; however, it’s humans killing humans in the wake of their rebellion against the government.  The tsunami here is all the non-stop carnage from unspeakable ferocity mowing down the innocent in a blood bath.  Trying to escape a wave of water knowing that it can actually happen that way as depicted in The Impossible can be shocking, but trapped in a country that’s gone ballistic in No Escape gets just as real.

Leading the cast, Owen Wilson puts on great show as Jack who’s trying to get to his family to take them out of harm’s way.  His performance makes the film worth seeing showing urgency and determination within the chaos of all the killing. Jack has only one thing on his mind and will let nothing get in his way until he’s reunited with his family back at the hotel.  He’s a take charge guy and when he finally gets to his wife and young daughters, he has to make decisions that most of us would not even think of doing. Wilson takes control of the film and it’s nice to see him back in action.

In a role that most A-List female actresses would probably pass on due to the rigorous skills needed to pull off the character, Lake Bell nails her character. She’s a dynamo when it comes to saving her children and getting them out of harm’s way.  Cornered in her hotel room with Beeze and with insurgents busting down doors to kill the foreign occupants, she can only commit to one thing – put up a fight or die. As the film progresses she’s running through the city with the frightened kids in tow and following orders from Jack. She’s not just the comedienne we’ve become to know, but raising her value as a dramatic actress with every conflict and unimaginable feat she has to perform.

In a casting call, the Dowdle’s find Sterling Jerins (played Libby Day in the mystery thriller Dark Places) to fill the shoes of Lucy and Claire Geare (who played Dee Dee in the terror flick Dream House) as Beeze and what a lucky catch.  The two youngsters are amazing in their roles as they face danger at every turn.  Asked to do some very unbelievable acts of courage, deal with life or death situations and be surrounded by violence, the two girls make their characters believable.

No Escape has been rated R by the MPAA for strong violence including a sexual assault, and for language.  The film is not for the timid and the faint-hearted as it contains very realistic brutality, slashing, merciless executions, attempted rape and other bloody deeds.

FINAL ANALYSIS: A very well made action filled film with very good performances all around. (B)