Review of No Escape (2015) by Matt G — 03 Sep 2015

Some movies? failures are noble. Maybe their ambitions exceed their reach; they strive for uniqueness but lose their identity along the way. No Escape is the opposite; much of its failures come from it being utterly familiar. It?s like a bad Xerox of so many other more successful thrillers: it?s Captain Phillips without the writing chops or strong social awareness; it?s San Andreas without the entertainment spectacle or needed humor; it?s Die Hard without the skill or fun. This pandering and manipulative rip-off is a dour, dull, joyless and miserable experience that I wish had an earlier escape.

No Escape takes-off as an ultra-bland 90s-thriller throwback, down to even the font of the title card. Once it gets going, the Paul-Greengrass-eque shaky cam takes over and eventually leads the movie from boring to just plain bad. The emotional manipulation through faulty slow motion and shameful use of scared children is unforgivable, only matched by the awful characters. Each are only pawns for horrifying things to happen to. Brosnan, a paradigm of lazy storytelling, is less a person and more a predictable and lazy screenwriting tool. With clearly no real thought or effort put into him, he basically serves as a walking, coincidental miracle.

Only a few aspects actually work. Wilson and Bell are both more than capable, and are clearly trying their best bring humanity to the terror. Also, the big Hollywood-based score with flourishes of its setting?s culture is actually pretty great. Unfortunately, it?s all stuck in an otherwise xenophobic and bland bag of cinema popcorn, leaving any positives lost under one of the worst films of 2015.