"No Escape" is a misleading title - in Hollywood movies, there's always an escape for an attractive American family caught in the middle of a bloody coup on foreign soil.
And yet, despite the foregone conclusion that Owen Wilson, Lake Bell and their adorable screen children will no doubt make it out alive - the film's debut in multiplexes and not arthouses makes it a near-certainty - director John Eric Dowdle still manages to craft an action picture with legitimate thrills and suspense. Crisp editing and uptempo pacing render the film a tense watch. And when you're clenching your teeth and your glutes in your seat, you're less likely to care that Wilson plays an average schmoe - "I invented a valve" is his version of "I'm Batman" - who apparently transforms into a quasi-Navy SEAL overnight.
That's what happens when your family is in danger of being murdered in cold blood by ruthless rebels, I guess. A sequence in which Wilson, as humble father, husband and everyman Jack Dwyer, must toss his young daughters across an urban chasm from one roof to another, was partially featured in the trailer for "No Escape." It's a harrowing few minutes of film that feel like a small eternity. Jack's wife, Annie (Bell), leaps across the space and skids and scrapes to a halt, then he shotputs the girls to her. Although they're small and young, they may be just heavy enough for him to fail, and Dowdle employs an angle that makes the expanse appear to be a few inches shy of the Grand Canyon. If you're at all agoraphobic, consider your fear exploited to the fullest.
FILM REVIEW
'No Escape'
3 stars (out of 4)
MPAA rating: R for strong violence including a sexual assault, and for language
Cast: Owen Wilson, Lake Bell, Pierce Brosnan
Director: John Eric Dowdle
Run time: 103 minutes
These are old cinema tricks: child endangerment, camera tricks, drawing out a brief moment of narrative time to an exhausting length. They sow a seed of doubt even when there really is none, and that's the mark of a filmmaker who knows how to effectively manipulate an audience - an impressive feat in an increasingly cynical era. Later, Jack and his family will step on crunchy twigs to give away their location to the bad guys, and wear disguises as they venture directly into a throng of their adversaries, stuff we've seen many times before, but here employed with enough of a classical sensibility, it's convincing rather than wearisome.
Granted, it's not the most enlightened narrative. Dowdle and sibling co-scripter Drew Dowdle set "No Escape" in a conveniently unnamed, presumably fictional Asian country - it was filmed in Thailand - and it thrums up fear via American xenophobia; all the bad guys are a different skin color than our Caucasian protagonists, and speak a foreign language that goes unsubtitled, so we assume everything they say has something to do with death and mayhem. The revolt isn't explained in any detail, but the rebels target Americans for slaughter, and turn the local fancy hotel into their abattoir. Jack is on the hit list because he works for the water company seeking political control in the country, a point half-illuminated, half-muddied by a few paltry lines of dialogue in between scenes of running, hiding, ducking, fleeing, shooting and fighting.
Pierce Brosnan plays the most colorful character, a grizzled-adventurer type who befriends the Dwyer family and pops into the plot whenever the Dowdles need a Brosnan Ex Machina. The film is preposterous and diverting, and I got swept up in its relentless energy, its modest desire to be a generic B-film intent on increasing your heart rate a half-dozen times as the weary family weathers one perilous event after another. "No Escape" isn't always a good movie, but it's often an effective one.
John Serba is film critic and entertainment reporter for MLive and The Grand Rapids Press. Email him at jserba@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter or Facebook.