What if you and your loved ones are trapped in a foreign war zone? The title of the new action thriller, No Escape, is meant to convey that desperate sense of being ensnared in a strange place and surrounded by violence, facing the real possibility of finding no way out.
Owen Wilson stars as Jack, a father leading his reluctant wife (Lake Bell) and their two bright girls to a new job in an unnamed Southeast Asian nation. They barely clear customs (and clear their heads of jetlag) before mobs of bomb-throwing, club-wielding maniacs, many of them hidden under masks, topple the dictatorship and turn the streets into rivers of blood. The boast of “I’m American!” has the opposite effect than intended; Jack witnesses a Yankee tourist dragged onto the sidewalk and executed with a bullet to the back of his head. A chase ensues as mild-mannered Jack suddenly manifests Army Ranger School skills, outrunning the mob by sprinting up a fire escape and bashing through a window. With carnage all around, his only thought is to save his family, but how?
Fortunately, he has a guardian angel in the form of Hammond (Pierce Brosnan), a worldly cynic who turns out to be a British agent. They first meet on the plane and through one of the coincidences that glue No Escape together, Hammond encounters Jack and family after night falls on a city in chaos, on fire and overrun with masked killers. Despite a few heart-pumping chases, it’s not always possible to suspend disbelief.
Especially in their first scenes together, before revolution erupts, Wilson and Brosnan threaten to make good of No Escape. Although miscast as an action hero, Wilson is fine as the dad with a sense of humor, the husband who has disappointed his wife and a man ironically aware that his new job for an American water consortium is a comedown from the promise of his early years. Brosnan is synonymous with suave action hero, yet he’s AWOL for much of the picture. Perhaps other commitments left him with limited time for this project?
No Escape keys in on anxiety over ISIS and other berserker movements, yet what’s strange is how it provides a rationalization for their hatred. As Brosnan points out to his clueless American friend, Jack’s water consortium is one of several transnational corporations capitalizing on the privatization of the country’s public services, offering the people little in return for the profitable deals cut with their despotic ruler. But if No Escape is meant to call out the ethical problems of a globalized economy, the message is eclipsed entirely by the murderous, faceless hordes of lunatic savages, jeopardizing the lives of an American family.
No Escape
2 and a half stars
Owen Wilson
Pierce Brosnan
Directed by John Erick Dowdle
Rated R
