Stay quiet, stay close, and stay fast.

No Escape

(2015)

(SPOILERS) Alternatively titled Those Lousy Central Americans Really Want to Kill Poor Owen Wilson and His Dearly Beloved, this picture received not a little lambasting on its release for perceived brazen racism and xenophobia, the fear of Johnny (or gooky) foreigner writ large. And that’s not without some justification. No Escape is certainly a ridiculously insensitive movie, in which an all-American family of the United States variety are relentlessly pursued by faceless hoards, bent on their destruction, after a coup unleashes anarchy in their newly arrived locale (and Owen only went there to help the natives, that kindly patrician westerner, him!). But that’s probably (I say probably, as I’m feeling charitable) more because this a horror movie disguised as a suspense thriller disguised as cautionary tale of the dangers of being an expat in an unstable locale; it’s made by a horror director, highly effectively it must be said, and his gangs of nationality-obscure locals (the country borders Vietnam, it was filmed in Thailand) are essentially zombie legions, or the legions of the damned found in any urban, night-shrouded horror.

To wit, I don’t think No Escape is necessarily the same kind of reprehensible exhibit that, say, Blackhawk Down is. Opportunistic yes, but that comes with the genre trappings; you can see at every turn that John Erick Dowdle (co-written with his brother Drew) is thinking “How can I really make this unnerving, really tighten the screws?” and he’s very successful at hitting his target. From hapless Wilson getting caught in a street fight, to the mayhem in his besieged hotel, the tension is ratcheted up with devilish skill. I’m not familiar with the Dowdles’ previous pictures, but if this is their attempt to broaden their palette (John devised the story following a near miss with the 2006 Thai coup), he very nearly succeeds, just unfortunately failing to make the content in his genre switch any more respectable.

So yeah, No Escape might put the fear up Americans considering a sojourn in foreign climes, but it comes from the same place as putting the fear up a rural type finding themselves alone in the big city. The mechanism is more visceral than political, even though such flagrant disregard isn’t to be commended.

And besides, there is at least a dump of wholly unfinessed exposition, courtesy of Pierce Brosnan in a top-form supporting role (“Got into a foit with a toiger”), enjoying himself as a less-than-suave secret agent (and showing he still has the moves nearly a decade and a half on from his last 007 outing). He admits it’s the gluttonous West that has caused the coup (“Guys like me pave the way for guys like you to wind up here”), going on to note that the undiscerning victims don’t usually fight back; the corporations who run the UK and the US offer a loan to pay for their services, knowing the debt can’t be repaid, and then “we own them”.

The problem is, excised from the horror genre, or even the more flamboyant action movie, the successive feats of unlikely derring-do increasingly beggar belief, from Wilson throwing his kids across streets onto roofs opposite, to Lake Bell going apeshit mental with a shovel. The push-pull between grounding and pure pulp exploitation is ultimately too uneasy to make No Escape a winner, the high point coming early on, when Wilson desperately kills a man and his reaction is every bit as shocked as it should be. But as the ante is upped, with the kids used for increasingly flagrant, tension-rousing purposes (including doing very stupid things) and Bell being subject to an attempted rape, the feeling of being led into something much less judiciously managed begins to take over. Nevertheless, with the right script, Dowdle could make something really impressive at some point.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

If a rat were to walk in here right now as I'm talking, would you treat it to a saucer of your delicious milk?

Inglourious Basterds (2009)
(SPOILERS) His staunchest fans would doubtless claim Tarantino has never taken a wrong step, but for me, his post-Pulp Fiction output had been either not quite as satisfying (Jackie Brown), empty spectacle (the Kill Bills) or wretched (Death Proof). It wasn’t until Inglourious Basterds that he recovered his mojo, revelling in an alternate World War II where Adolf didn’t just lose but also got machine gunned to death in a movie theatre showing a warmly received Goebbels-produced propaganda film. It may not be his masterpiece – as Aldo Raines refers to the swastika engraved on “Jew hunter” Hans Landa’s forehead, and as Tarantino actually saw the potential of his script – but it’s brimming with ideas and energy.

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

Hey, everybody. The bellboy's here.

Four Rooms (1995)
(SPOILERS) I had an idea that I’d only seen part of Four Rooms previously, and having now definitively watched the entire thing, I can see where that notion sprang from. It’s a picture that actively encourages you to think it never existed. Much of it isn’t even actively terrible – although, at the same time, it couldn’t be labelled remotely good– but it’s so utterly lethargic, so lacking in the energy, enthusiasm and inventiveness that characterises these filmmakers at their best – and yes, I’m including Rodriguez, although it’s a very limited corner for him – that it’s very easy to banish the entire misbegotten enterprise from your mind.

Just because you are a character doesn't mean that you have character.

Pulp Fiction (1994)
(SPOILERS) From a UK perspective, Pulp Fiction’s success seemed like a fait accompli; Reservoir Dogs had gone beyond the mere cult item it was Stateside and impacted mainstream culture itself (hard to believe now that it was once banned on home video); it was a case of Tarantino filling a gap in the market no one knew was there until he drew attention to it (and which quickly became over-saturated with pale imitators subsequently). Where his debut was a grower, Pulp Fiction hit the ground running, an instant critical and commercial success (it won the Palme d’Or four months before its release), only made cooler by being robbed of the Best Picture Oscar by Forrest Gump. And unlike some famously-cited should-have-beens, Tarantino’s masterpiece really did deserve it.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

Our very strength incites challenge. Challenge incites conflict. And conflict... breeds catastrophe.

The MCU Ranked Worst to Best

The adversary oft comes in the shape of a he-goat.

The Witch (2015)
(SPOILERS) I’m not the biggest of horror buffs, so Stephen King commenting that The Witch “scared the hell out of me” might have given me pause for what was in store. Fortunately, he’s the same author extraordinaire who referred to Crimson Peak as “just fucking terrifying” (it isn’t). That, and that general reactions to Robert Eggers’ film have fluctuated across the scale, from the King-type response on one end of the spectrum to accounts of unrelieved boredom on the other. The latter response may also contextualise the former, depending on just what King is referring to, because what’s scary about The Witch isn’t, for the most part, scary in the classically understood horror sense. It’s scary in the way The Wicker Man is scary, existentially gnawing away at one through judicious martialling of atmosphere, setting and theme.

Indeed, this is far more impressive a work than Ben Wheatley’s Kill List, which had hitherto been compared to The Wicker Man, succeeding admirably …

I am forever driven on this quest.

Ad Astra (2019)
(SPOILERS) Would Apocalypse Now have finished up as a classic if Captain Willard had been ordered on a mission to exterminate his mad dad with extreme prejudice, rather than a mysterious and off-reservation colonel? Ad Astra features many stunning elements. It’s an undeniably classy piece of filmmaking from James Gray, who establishes his tone from the get-go and keeps it consistent, even through various showy set pieces. But the decision to give its lead character an existential crisis entirely revolving around his absent father is its reductive, fatal flaw, ultimately deflating much of the air from Gray’s space balloon.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog