Hey, Remember When Owen Wilson And Pierce Brosnan Teamed Up For An Action Thriller?
Moving abroad to start a new job can be a daunting prospect. When we relocated to Brno in the Czech Republic in 2009, it was an all-or-nothing gamble. We'd sold our furniture and given away pretty much everything else to charity, saving just our personal effects and keepsakes. Money was very tight, with just enough of a bankroll to keep us going for three months unless my partner also found work. We spent that period sleeping on air beds, and mine developed a slow puncture. I'd wake up in the middle of the night with it wrapped around me, and have to blow it up again before I could get some more kip.
Luckily, in a safe and peaceful country like the Czech Republic, we didn't have to worry about getting caught up in a violent uprising, a nightmare scenario that horror director John Erick Dowdle ("As Above, So Below") tackles in his dubious action thriller "No Escape." Released in 2015 without much fanfare, the low-budget movie saw Owen Wilson playing against type as a regular guy trying to protect his family before hitting the catwalk again in "Zoolander 2." The film paired the actor with Lake Bell as his resourceful wife and also starred Pierce Brosnan, eating up the screen in full disreputable "The Matador" mode.
"No Escape" performed well at the box office, making over $54 million from its extremely modest $5 million budget, but critics were split between praising its action and suspense and decrying its "borderline xenophobia." They weren't the only ones who took issue with the film's portrayal of an anonymous Southeast Asian country, which caused controversy and upset the Cambodian government in particular.
Eight years later, "No Escape" has recently muscled its way into Netflix's Top 10 movies in some regions. So what is it all about, and is it worth your time?
What happens in No Escape?
"No Escape" opens at a fancy dinner party as the Prime Minister of an unnamed country in Southeast Asia closes a deal with an American water company called Cardiff. He doesn't have much time to celebrate, however, as his mansion is stormed by rebels. They shoot the PM dead and launch their coup d'etat.
The film rewinds to 17 hours earlier, where we meet engineer Jack Dwyer (Owen Wilson) on a flight to start a new job with the company, accompanied by his wife Annie (Lake Bell) and his daughters Lucy (Sterling Jerins) and Beeze (Claire Geare). On arrival, they find that their driver hasn't turned up, but they are offered a ride by Hammond (Pierce Brosnan), a seedy British sex tourist who was also on the plane. There are already a few ominous signs of what is to come: On the journey to the hotel, Jack spots military police running around, and the TV and internet are down across the city.
The next morning, Jack heads out to find a newspaper in English and finds himself in a very unenviable situation, caught in a market street between a furious mob and a squad of riot police. He avoids the carnage and makes his way back to the hotel, only to discover that it is surrounded by angry insurgents ready to murder any Westerners they can find. Rounding up his family, Jack follows Hammond's advice and heads to the roof, which only provides brief sanctuary before it is overrun. Their only hope is to make it across town to the American embassy, which is only a few miles away. But a few miles can seem like a hundred when you're a foreigner in a city full of people ready to hack you to pieces.
Where is No Escape set and why was there controversy?
Director John Erick Dowdle, who frequently writes with his brother Drew, based the "No Escape" screenplay on his own trip to Southeast Asia in 2006. Just before arriving in Thailand, a coup had overthrown the Prime Minister. He told Creative Screenwriting:
"There'd been no previous warning. There was a feeling of anxiety in the air. So I started thinking about that. If it went badly, what would I do?"
After developing the screenplay, the brothers rustled up enough of a budget to shoot on location and attract stars like Owen Wilson and Pierce Brosnan. Filming in Thailand meant that Dowdle needed to make certain concessions to avoid offending their hosts, agreeing not to mention the country as the story's location and removing most of the Thai language, signs, and other items that could potentially cause offense. However, CNN Travel reported that many of the extras are shouting in unsubtitled Thai, so the ruse wasn't totally watertight.
The changes kept Thai officials happy, but "No Escape" ruffled plenty of feathers across the border in neighboring Cambodia. Trailers for the film were greeted with anger as the filmmakers crudely solved the signage problem by replacing the Thai alphabet with upside-down Khmer, resulting in the country's Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts banning the movie in the Kingdom.
To make matters worse, a major plot point essentially identifies Cambodia as the film's unnamed location: To escape the uprising, the family must travel a few miles downriver to the Vietnamese border. Thailand doesn't share a border with Vietnam, so the combination of this detail and the upside-down Khmer lettering paint Cambodia as the film's violent hellhole.
Is No Escape any good?
"No Escape" is regularly bashed for being racist and culturally insensitive, and it's easy to see why. Even before the uprising kicks off, Owen Wilson treats the hotel staff with contempt and walks the streets giving the locals the side-eye. It's a classic case of the "ugly American" trope, which sits uneasily with the film's portrayal of its nameless location and its people. There isn't a single Asian character with a role of any note, which is problematic. By not really treating Asians as humans in the first place, the insurgents might as well be a horde of zombies. To make matters worse, coyly refusing to name the destination gives the impression that the filmmakers don't really care about the culture or politics of the region, reducing the all-too-real horrors of a bloody uprising to a high-concept basis for the action.
As dubious high concepts go, "No Escape" is a brutally efficient thriller once it gets going. One scene in particular, involving a perilous leap across rooftops with children in tow, made me so unbearably tense that I almost skipped forward. With kids of my own, there were occasions when I genuinely feared for the family's lives.
The action is relentless and grim, with Owen Wilson getting beaten up a lot and plenty of atrocities in the background. It's an ugly experience that might prove too depressing if it wasn't for the sadly fleeting appearances of Pierce Brosnan, who has fun doing his lascivious and disreputable thing from "The Matador."
Is it worth your time? That very much depends on your sensibilities. The crude portrayal of its supposedly anonymous location leaves a sour taste and will be enough to turn many viewers off. For those able to put that to one side, masochists will probably delight in a very intense and claustrophobic survival thriller.