There are films that you engage with on an intellectual level. And then there are films like No Escape that you experience with the rest of your body. The new film about an American family trying to escape to safety after a military coup breaks out in Southeast Asia is never deep, but it provides such relentless heart-pounding thrills that, for a while, you forget that you need anything more. No Escape is pure edge-of-your-seat popcorn-movie escapism.
This is not a film that can be spoiled — the story is, after all, so straightforward — and indeed the shape of the film was outlined right there in the trailer. Jack Dwyer (Owen Wilson), whose small business has recently failed, takes a job at an American water purification firm in a never-specified Southeast Asian country and relocates there with his wife Annie (Lake Bell) and two young daughters, Lucy (Sterling Jerins) and Beeze (Claire Geare). The very next day, as Jack wanders near the hotel looking for a morning newspaper, he suddenly finds himself in the middle of a war zone after militants murder the prime minister and take over, and he rushes back to protect his family.
From there, the film is one long harrowing whirlwind that rarely stops to let you breathe. Filmmaking brothers John Erick and Drew Dowdle have spent most of their career to date making mid-budget horror films (Quarantine; As Above, So Below). Like the Coen Brothers of old, the Dowdles have a filmmaking dynamic where John Erick directs, Drew produces, and both write — and this step into large-scale action filmmaking feels like a confident evolution for them. The brothers capture the chaos of the upheaval with terrifying realism, and a sequence where the Dwyers attempt to escape from the rooftop of their hotel is the film at its stomach-churning, so-intense-you-can’t-breathe best. DP Léo Hinstin’s frenetic photography creates a swirling disorientation of overwhelming sights and sounds and constant danger that threatens from all sides, though enormous credit must also be given to editor Elliot Greenberg, whose ruthless cutting of the film is just wall-to-wall panic and confusion that traps the Dwyers without reprieve in a newly hostile country that offers no hope or sanctuary. No Escape manages to tell a deeply personal story of a single family’s survival that is also an epic feat of utterly convincing world-building. This feels real, the threats so genuine and immediate. In many ways, this film demonstrates exactly the reason we go to the movies.
If I haven’t mentioned anyone other than the Dwyer family yet, however, that’s because the Dowdles’ screenplay never comes close to reaching the standard set by their terrific direction. The murderous militants who orchestrated the coup and are now hunting for the Americans are about as anonymous and interchangeable as it’s possible to be. None of the Asian characters are given a personality or do much of anything beyond snarling and shouting and waving guns around. The threat is real, but it may as well be coming from an army of orcs from Middle-Earth for all the specificity the Dowdles give them. The Asian characters speak in unsubtitled Asian languages — the film was shot in Thailand, though the unnamed country is located where Cambodia should be — and this sense of otherness only adds to the terror and isolation of the Americans trapped amongst them. Oh, and Pierce Brosnan is in the film too, as a British ex-pat named Hammond who magically always appears at exactly the right moment to save the Dwyers — no matter what part of the city the family find themselves in. Hammond is written and performed as a mysterious and fun-loving guy, and Brosnan has a mischievous twinkle in his eyes whenever he’s on screen, but he’s nothing more than a plot device. The Dowdles have spent more time developing the characters of the Dwyer family, but only just enough so that the viewer is able to care about them. Wilson and Bell bring so much to their performances, though, making these people seem like a real family with affection and a history, even if we don’t know all that much about them.
The Dowdles do make some attempt to imbue their film with a Big Message, but whatever they’re trying to say about the dirty realities of Western interest in third-world resources and how that motivated the military coup is ultimately too simplistic and under-explored. But No Escape is not meant as a high-brow film of ideas; this is all about engaging the viewer deep in the gut. And, boy, does it ever succeed. This is thrilling popcorn cinema at its finest — that is, if you can remember to close your mouth enough to chew.
