Movie Review - No Escape

No Escape *** (out of 5) (R) This film functions well on two levels. Primarily, it’s an action-adventure that keeps your adrenaline pumping for most of its running (both definitions) time. Owen Wilson plays an engineer moving to Southeast Asia with his wife (Lake Bell) and two young daughters for a huge global contractor’s project to deliver clean water to the countryside. Unfortunately, they arrive just as rebels are knocking off the president, and slaughtering every foreigner they can find. Owen and his family scramble desperately to avoid the roaming bands, winging it without any of the survival skills of a Liam Neeson or Matt Damon hero.

Director John Erick Dowdle, who co-wrote the script with his brother, Drew, treats viewers to a thrill ride deftly balanced between arcade-game ordeals and a relatable human struggle for survival in horrible conditions. Its manic tempo amid gritty urban Thai locations should satisfy gamers, while the ratio of character development should reel in those who prefer their mayhem with a side order of deeper personal attachments. In that regard, our heroic little family could have been desperately dodging zombies, aliens, viruses, tsunamis or any other movie-fodder menace to the masses. The formula works if it’s well paced and placed, regardless of the specific type of peril.

That brings us to the second tier - what started this particular uprising? Anyone with a sense of how economics have shaped world history more than moral or political factors will find the explanation for this coup far more compelling as illustrating the realities behind the curtains, past and present, for just about any land mass where people and other resources may be found...and exploited. This level stimulates the cerebral as fully as the principal action does for the visceral. That’s essentially a double feature for your time and money, making it a potential bargain for those interested in both sides of the coin. (8/26/15)