Originally published August 29, 2015 on FrontRowCentral.com
The single most frustrating thing about John Erick Dowdle’s latest thriller, No Escape, is that it is hands down his most technically impressive piece of work to date. It would be easy to write this film off as little more than B-grade exploitation, and perhaps maybe we should. For every scene that reveals a little more of Dowdle’s apparently crippling xenophobia, though, an action sequence follows that keeps you on the edge of your seat. No Escape is an easy film to get swept up in, but ultimately a hard one to recommend.
As the film opens, American contractor Jack Dwyer (Owen Wilson) arrives in the distant land of Some Asian Country That Borders Vietnam with his wife Annie (Lake Bell) and their two daughters. Jack has taken a job with a global conglomerate, whose negative influence on the local economy ignites riots so violent that a full-scale coup d’etat takes place. Rebels soon break into Jack’s hotel and start executing every foreigner in sight. They are hunting for Jack specifically, because his company was nice enough to put up a big welcome banner with his face on it right in the middle of the hotel lobby. After fleeing to the roof and then leaping off of it to the next building over, Jack and his family must stay ten steps ahead of the rebels and find a way out of the country.
The Dwyers are not alone in their struggle, though. Dropping in from time to time is Hammond (Pierce Brosnan), a British ex-pat who almost explicitly introduces himself as a sex tourist. At first, Hammond comes off as just some boozy interloper, and Brosnan seems to love playing his version of James Bond as a washed-up philanderer who can still kick ass in a fight. Eventually, though, we learn Hammond’s true purpose, as he explains to Jack exactly what the hell is going on, and why people are suddenly out to kill him. Brosnan’s character may only exist to lampshade the film’s xenophobia, but it works, and the film knows exactly when and where to deploy him.
Of course, none of that excuses No Escape’s xenophobia, or its more racist undertones. It explains them, puts them in the proper context, but it certainly doesn’t excuse them. To that end, the film does court comparisons to Taken, and not in a good way. As the Dwyers sneak their way through the city, every local becomes suspicious; every word not spoken in English becomes a portent of doom. And the film offers no subtitles, leading us to always assume the worst. The film forces us into the trap of worrying if the next person they meet is going to sell them out. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, but the very fact that the film even plays this game just makes my stomach turn.
And as mentioned in the opening, what’s frustrating about that is that the rest of the film is actually quite good. At it’s heart, this is a white-knuckle suspense thriller, and forcing Owen Wilson and Lake Bell into situations of extreme duress is genuinely compelling. It also helps that Dowdle’s use of handheld camerawork, especially early on, keeps us right in the thick of things. Jack’s first trek through the city begins with him strolling out to find a newsstand and ends with him fleeing the inciting riot. This is accomplished through one long tracking shot, which is then edited down into quick cuts for maximum efficiency. It’s a thrilling bit of visual storytelling, but the film abandons this in the back half in favor of horror-inspired setpieces that fall much more in line with Dowdle’s wheelhouse.
Ultimately, the real villain in No Escape is the giant corporation that sends Jack overseas in the first place. Not only does Jack’s company monopolize resources in third-world countries, inciting violence and military coups through its very business practices, but it treats its own employees like dirt, too. It’s tempting to suggest ways in which this film might have become an indictment of soulless multi-national conglomerates, but the simple fact is that that isn’t the story being told here. The story being told is that Some Asian Country is out to murder Some White People, and in that respect alone, No Escape comes off as insanely regressive.
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