**Spoiler Alert**
Director: John Erick Dowdle/Starring: Owen Wilson, Lake Bell and Pierce Brosnan
It seems a new genre is slowly emerging; that of white, western families imperiled in southeast Asian natural catastrophes or political upheaval. In 2012 we saw The Impossible; a story about a white, European family struggling for their lives after a tsunami strikes the Thai coastline. Now we have director John Erick Dowdle's No Escape; a story of an American family visiting a southeast Asian country (the country is never specified, as far as I can recall), who try to flee during a violent uprising.
Though Dowdle's film has a hyper-kinetic urgency, it is also one of those films that becomes insubstantial when considered shortly thereafter. In the sobering light of day, one sees the film for what it is: an engaging but shallow thriller.
Owen Wilson plays Jack Dwyer, an American engineer in the employ of a multinational company who has come to southeast Asia to lend his expertise to a project that will help modernize the country's water system. After arriving at the airport, Jack and his wife Annie (Lake Bell) and their two daughters meet a man named Hammond (Pierce Brosnan), who takes an interest in their welfare by steering them away from shady taxi drivers. The seemingly genial Hammond then rides with the family to the hotel. We gather Hammond is some sort of businessman though what he does specifically remains nebulous.
We learn that Jack's professional woes, which include his own failed company, demand the family be itinerant, a burden Annie is keen to remind her husband about.
As Jack wanders from his hotel to find a newspaper, he visits the local markets, hoping to secure a copy of USA Today. On his way back to the hotel, he finds himself in between an armed mob and a phalanx of police men in riot gear. The mob clashes with the police while Jack struggles to escape. En route to the hotel, he sees the police have been overcome as the mob swells to army-size proportions. He also notices the mob's murderous agenda includes hacking people to death with machetes and shooting anyone unattached to the uprising. Horrified, Jack manages to reach the hotel, only to find the staff is busy trying to barricade itself against the rampaging mob. Back in his room, Jack tries to explain to his wife what is happening in the street. Jack learns his older daughter has wandered down alone to the hotel pool. Jack orders his wife and other daughter to stay in the room while he searches for his daughter. While making his way to his daughter, he sees that members of the mob have forced their way into the hotel and are conducting room by room executions. He takes a stairwell down to the pool and eventually finds his daughter though the mob spots him and gives chase. While he and his daughter make their way back, Annie hears the screams and shouts of victims the mob is hacking to death. She barricades the door until her husband arrives.
The terrifying scenes of the roving mob members have a brutal immediacy and visceral impact as well as a frightening realism.
Jack and his family find they have little choice but to seek refuge on the roof of the hotel, which they find barricaded from outside by hotel guests and staff, who have also sought shelter there. Relieved to be among fellow refugees, their sense of security is dashed when a helicopter, which they believe to be part of an evacuation effort, turns out to be manned by the members of the uprising; who begin shooting at the fleeing hotel patrons. Though the helicopter crashes while trying to maintain a hovering position, the mob finally breaks through the doors. Searching for a way off the roof, Jack finds that their only means of escape is to leap across a chasm to another roof; a frightening and highly dangerous alternative.
As the mob makes its way toward Jack's position, he and his family manage to make the leap to the other roof, though not without desperate measures.
Jack and his family play an unrelentingly tense cat and mouse game with the mob through buildings and city streets as they hatch a plan to reach the American Embassy. The harrowing journey is for naught; for they find the embassy has been overrun. The only remaining means to freedom is a highly dangerous trip down river to Vietnam, where they hope to gain asylum.
Jack learns the nature of the uprising after Hammond rescues the family from the mob's clutches--a nail-biting scene inside a garden where Annie almost sacrifices herself to save her husband. Hammond reveals his true identity as an operative for English intelligence, which comes as hardly a surprise; his motives for being in the country seemed suspicious from the start. He explains that the uprising is a response to the west's attempt to gain control of the water supply, in which espionage plays a major role. He also tells Jack his work as an engineer is merely a means to that end. The closest Hammond comes to an expression of contrition is to acknowledge that the uprising is merely the populace's way of protecting one of the country's resources from multinational corporate control, which is backed by capitalist governments. It's hard to believe that something that seems to be of paramount importance to the west wouldn't be backed to some degree by the American military.
Dowdle, who directed the creepy, 2014 horror film As Above, So Below, brings some of the same intensity to his new film. Barely a moment of rest is to be had; the suspense sustained for 103 minutes is almost exhausting. The physical and mental strain on the cast must have been tremendous. Owen Wilson and Lake Bell, who are typically comedic actors, perform admirably here in roles that demand more dramatic reach. Though his part is minimal, Brosnan shows his action movie experience as 007 hasn't gone to waste. Brosnan is quite credible as an agent in the service of unscrupulous higher powers.
But as I mentioned before, the film doesn't really add up to much. The film feels like a ride on a bullet train without breaks but its manic kineticism is meaningless, in spite of Hammond's weak and predictable revelation.
No Escape is a heady experience but one that leaves one feeling somewhat guilty for enjoying. Though it aims for a higher message, the film is really just a thriller sans intellectual gravitas. It's a jolt and a jive and that's it.
