Hey 3.5.
Action. Explosions. Suspense and guess what?
Not a single dude in tights with a cape to be seen!
Hollywood surprises us with a winner with No Escape.
Be warned: there’s “no escaping” these spoilers.
Ha. See what I did there? That guy gets it. Yes. You sir. Right there. Thanks for reading.
The setup? After his company goes belly up, Jack Dwyer (Owen Wilson) moves his wife, Annie (Lake Bell) and two young daughters to an unnamed Southeastern Asia country. It borders Vietnam and I could probably figure it out if I felt like looking for a map but I really don’t. Since it wasn’t named, I assume the movie producers weren’t looking to criticize any particular country anyway.
Before I go on, am I the only one who thought Annie was played by Idina Menzel of “Let it Go, Let it Go” fame?
The whole summer I’ve been seeing previews for this film and I’ve been like, “Huh. Elsa’s flexing her acting chops. Good for her.”
And throughout the whole movie, I was like, “Wow. That ‘Let it Go’ chick is really letting an ass whooping go on these bad guys.”
But it wasn’t Idina Menzel. It was Lake Bell. But I swear they look alike, so much so that Idina Menzel will probably get an award for being in this movie that she wasn’t even in.
Plus, I have to be honest, I’ve never heard of Lake Bell before, so now I’m wondering how many times I’ve seen her in other stuff and assumed it was Idina Menzel.
Mind=blown.
Anyway, the Dwyers aren’t settled into their new digs for more than a few hours when rebels storm the city, overrun the police and military, and start rounding up and shooting Americans/Brits/Aussies, various others they’ve identified as foreign devils.
It’s up to Jack to save his family as the Dwyers manage to stay just a few steps away from being slaughtered throughout the entire film.
People who are used to Owen Wilson being that happy go lucky, laid back mellow dude will be surprised to see him in this role. He still is that “dude” but this movie asks us to consider all the terrible things we might do to save our families, from taking a drastic chance that they’ll survive being thrown across a large gap between rooftops (note in real life they won’t) to beating a man to death who refuses to keep quiet.
It’s like Dupree but with killing.
You, Me and Dupree. God that movie sucked. Don’t even get me started on Drillbit Taylor. All is forgiven though, Owen, you’ve really redeemed yourself with this one.
Pierce Brosnan rounds out the cast as Hammond, a British badass adventurer type who comes to the Dwyer’s aid. He’s a bit mysterious but we’re alerted to his badassery early on when he informs Jack’s kids that he extracted the tiger tooth he’s wearing on a necklace from an actual tiger.
Reviewers have referred to this movie as “stressful” and it is. The stakes are high. We’ve seen a lot of super hero movies this summer with cartoonish violence. I’m not knocking them. I love them. But when a movie focuses around whether a family with two little kids is going to make it or not, it becomes a lot more real than, say, whether or not Iron Man’s suit gets a dent in it.
Love the comic book movies, but it’s good to see that Hollywood hasn’t completely forgotten that action can happen to the non-caped as well.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Bookshelf Battle 