It looks a lot like Thailand, but the use of Khmer
lettering somewhat upset Cambodia. The anarchy and mass killings engulfing the
fictional Southeast Asian city also rather parallel the brutal fall of Phnom
Penh, which could be the real reason for the Cambodian government’s censorship decision. On the other hand, the head of state’s official garb bears a vague
resemblance to that of the King of Thailand. Unfortunately, we will not have
time to learn if he is also a jazz lover and amateur musician, like Bhumibol
Adulyadej. The dear leader is about to become the dearly departed, unleashing
murderous bedlam in John Erick Dowdle’s No
Escape (trailer here),
which opens today in wide release.
After his tech start-up crashed and burned,
Jack Dwyer accepted a middle-manager position with Talbott, an international engineering
firm. He is in the process of relocating his family to a country that is one
hundred percent not Cambodia but happens to border Vietnam, where he will help
construct a water plant. For this he should die, according to the ninety-nine
percenters that are about to launch an insurrection. It is nothing personal,
just ideology.
As the terrorists work their way through the
Dwyer’s hotel, summarily executing guests room-by-room, Dwyer scrambles to lead
with wife Annie and two daughters to safety. He will get some heads-up
assistance from Hammond, a suspiciously cool-under fire Brit. However, things
start to get truly desperate when the leftist guerillas call in the helicopter gunships
to strafe their presumed safe haven on the roof.
No Escape would be a nifty
thriller (sort of like Bayona’s The
Impossible, if the tsunami came packing an AK-47), had it not felt
compelled to periodically bring the action to a screeching stop in order to
blame everything on western imperialism, or is it globalism in this case? In
any event, we are responsible, please chastise us. That would be Pierce Brosnan’s
job as Hammond, who assures Dwyer the men who just murdered scores of innocent
bellhops and office workers are only trying to protect their families, like you
Jack. Of course, such moral equivalency is simply farcical.
Believe it or not, Owen Wilson shows some real
action cred as the super-motivated everyman. Brosnan also takes visible delight
in Hammond’s dissipated tendencies, providing some much needed shtick-free
comic relief. Sahajak Boonthanakit also compliments him rather nicely as “Kenny
Rogers,” Hammond’s country music loving local crony. However, the film suffers
from the lack of a focal villain—a Robespierre to incite the mob.
