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.

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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…

You’re never the same man twice.

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
(SPOILERS) Roger Moore playing dual roles? It sounds like an unintentionally amusing prospect for audiences accustomed to the actor’s “Raise an eyebrow” method of acting. Consequently, this post-Saint pre-Bond role (in which he does offer some notable eyebrow acting) is more of a curiosity for the quality of Sir Rog’s performance than the out-there premise that can’t quite sustain the picture’s running time. It is telling that the same story was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 15 years earlier, since the uncanny idea at its core feels like a much better fit for a trim 50 minute anthology series.

Basil Dearden directs, and co-adapted the screenplay from Anthony Armstrong’s novel The Strange Case of Mr Pelham. Dearden started out with Ealing, helming several Will Hay pictures and a segment of Dead of Night (one might imagine a shortened version of this tale ending up there, or in any of the portmanteau horrors that arrived in the year…

Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice.

Split (2016)
(SPOILERS) M Night Shyamalan went from the toast of twist-based filmmaking to a one-trick pony to the object of abject ridicule in the space of only a couple of pictures: quite a feat. Along the way, I’ve managed to miss several of his pictures, including his last, The Visit, regarded as something of a re-locating of his footing in the low budget horror arena. Split continues that genre readjustment, another Blumhouse production, one that also manages to bridge the gap with the fare that made him famous. But it’s a thematically uneasy film, marrying shlock and serious subject matter in ways that don’t always quite gel.

Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

‘Cos I’m the gringo who always delivers.

American Made (2017)
(SPOILERS) This is definitely more the sort of thing Tom Cruise should be doing, a movie that relies both on his boyish™ charm and at least has pretensions of ever so slightly pushing the envelope of standard multiplex fare, rather than desperately attaching himself to an impersonal franchise (The Mummy) or flailingly attempting to kick start one (Jack Reacher: Never Go Back); remember when Cruise wouldn’t even go near sequels (for about 20 years, The Color of Money aside, and then only the one series)? American Made is still victim to the tendency of his movies to feel superstar-fitted rather than remaining as punchy as they might be on paper (Made’s never quite as satirically sharp as it wants to be), but it at least doesn’t lead its audience by the nose.

Two hundred thousand pounds, for this outstanding example of British pulchritude and learning.

The Avengers 4.18: The Girl From Auntie
I’ve mentioned that a few of these episodes have changed in my appreciation since I last watched the series, and The Girl from Auntie constitutes a very pronounced uptick. Indeed, I don’t know how I failed to rate highly the estimable Liz Fraser filling in for Diana Rigg – mostly absent, on holiday –for the proceedings (taking a not dissimilar amateur impostor-cum-sidekick role to Fenella Fielding in the earlier The Charmers). I could watch Fraser all day, and it’s only a shame this was her single appearance in the show.

By Jove, the natives are restless tonight.

The Avengers 4.17: Small Game for Big Hunters
I wonder if Death at Bargain Prices’ camping scene, suggestive of an exotic clime but based in a department store, was an inspiration for Small Game For Big Hunters’ more protracted excursion to the African country of Kalaya… in Hertfordshire. Gerry O’Hara, in his second of two episodes for the show again delivers on the atmosphere, making the most of Philip Levene’s teleplay.

Old Boggy walks on Lammas Eve.

Jeeves and Wooster 2.5: Kidnapped (aka The Mysterious Stranger)
Kidnapped continues the saga of Chuffnell Hall. Having said of 2.4 that the best Wodehouse adaptations tend to stick closely to the text, this one is an exception that proves the rule, diverging significantly yet still scoring with its highly preposterous additions.

Jeeves: Tis old boggy. He be abroad tonight. He be heading for the railway station.
Gone are many of the imbroglios involving Stoker and Glossop (the estimable Roger Brierley), including the contesting of the former’s uncle’s will. Also gone, sadly, is the inebriated Brinkley throwing potatoes at Stoker, which surely would have been enormous fun. Instead, we concentrate on Bertie being locked aboard Stoker’s yacht in order to secure his marriage to Pauline (as per the novel), Chuffy tailing Pauline in disguise (so there’s a different/additional reason for Stoker to believe Bertie and she spent the night together, this time at a pub en route to Chufnell Hall) and …

I think we’ve returned to Eden. Surely this is how the World once was in the beginning of time.

1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)
Ridley Scott’s first historical epic (The Duellists was his first historical, and his first feature, but hardly an epic) is also one of his least remembered films. It bombed at the box office (as did the year’s other attempted cash-ins on the discovery of America, including Superman: The Movie producers the Salkinds’ Christopher Columbus: The Discovery) and met with a less than rapturous response from critics. Such shunning is undeserved, as 1492: Conquest of Paradise is a richer and more thought-provoking experience than both the avowedly lowbrow Gladiator and the re-evaluated-but-still-so-so director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven. It may stand guilty of presenting an overly sympathetic portrait of Columbus, but it isn’t shy about pressing a critical stance on his legacy.

Sanchez: The truth is, that he now presides over a state of chaos, of degradation, and of madness. From the beginning, Columbus proved himself completely incapable of ruling these islands…

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