No Escape review

A family gets caught up in a terrifying coup as they try to settle into a new country.

No Escape is pretty nuts, and that’s mostly a good thing.

Frequent horror director John Erick Dowdle (Devil, As Above So Below) brings that level of intensity to this action thriller by putting a young family in constant terrifying danger. It’s often very tense and pulls no punches in putting them in harms way.

The whole film unfolds in a short space of time as an un-named South East Asian country unravels before their eyes. The production shot in Thailand but for fairly obvious reasons the government didn’t want the country named.

Which brings up the less successful aspect of No Escape – the politics. There are strong references here to civil protests, corrupt American operators and jabs at real-life issues but when they’re thrown into an action film as preposterous and grimy as this they just come off as awkward and kind of sinister.

It doesn’t help that we’re encouraged to only care about the fate of the extremely white family at the centre of the tale. They’re surrounded by death and destruction but we’re supposed to root for them at every turn, despite the characters being generally presented as dim and xenophobic.

It all works much better if you totally ignore that material (however hard that may be) and just see it as an action film. Dowdle brings a good sense of scale despite the meagre $5 million budget and crafts a number of set pieces which are genuinely engaging. One rooftop moment is utterly insane and very likely impossible but it’s all sold by the filmmaking.

Owen Wilson does a decent job as the put-upon father, trying on his action hat for pretty much the first time since 2001’s Behind Enemy Lines. Comedy lady Lake Bell is less convincing but gets suitably broken down as the movie progresses. The kids are more problematic, mostly because they’re incredibly irritating. It might be realistic but their constant snivelling and moaning sometimes turns the action into the equivalent of a long and irritating car journey.

One major plus – Pierce Brosnan is having a great time as a British fellow with some kind of secret. He plays a great ageing yob, more of this please.

No Escape is by turns tense, awkward, entertaining and ill-advised. It all adds up to a strangely watchable cocktail but it certainly won’t be for everyone.

3/5

Daniel Anderson