Review of No Escape (2015) by Dottheeyes — 25 Aug 2015

Recently hired by an international conglomerate, an American man (Owen Wilson) spirits his reluctant wife (Lake Bell) and daughters (Sterling Jerins and Claire Geare) from Texas to Southeast Asia. On their first morning abroad, the fresh start is disrupted by an explosive coup and a subsequent wave of anti-Western mob violence.

With the help of a mysterious, seasoned expatriate (Pierce Brosnan), the family fights to stay a step ahead of their pursuers and escape to bordering Vietnam. No Escape is a fast, vicious, and highly involving action-suspense film.

Wilson (in a relatively rare, but not unprecedented dramatic role) and Bell exude convincing parental desperation and dismay, while Brosnan is a scene-stealing delight, if a tad underutilized, as the debauched, jovial, unshaven Man with a Past Who Knows the Lay of the Land.

The film zips from one close-call-in-close-quarters set piece to the next, rarely pulling a punch in regard to violence and nicely maintaining momentum and a pervasive atmosphere of claustrophobia and paranoia.

The specter of potential xenophobia is present (this is a film in which a sympathetic white family is contrasted with and pit against a thronging Other, and there will be those who ignore the quality of the acting and craft on display because of this), but the film admirably, if a tad halfheartedly motions to temper this by also indicting Western corporations' acts of exploitation and resource plundering in the Third World.

I for one have no significant problem with a grind-house-spirited film such as this mining stranger-in-a-strange-land unease: the spatial disorientation, the inability to easily communicate, etc. After all, it is a real and recognizable experience and, by extension, a perfectly ripe subject for pulp entertainment.