Going abroad is stressful. Sometimes the food’s weird and the weather’s discombobulating, the language is a devil and the locals are unfriendly. Your energy gets sapped. In a knackered fuzz you could start to blame the foreign culture for making you feel this way. If you were feeling really resentful, you might write a film a bit like No Escape.
A daft thriller that sprints along fuelled by xenophobia, No Escape is the fifth collaboration between writer-director siblings John and Drew Dowdle. It’s inspired by John’s 2006 trip to Thailand, which coincided with a peaceful military coup. His holiday carried on without event, but out of that potential danger the brothers have spun a ludicrous yarn: a boggle-eyed panic attack set in an unnamed east Asian country with locals that are mystical or hysterical or both.
Owen Wilson plays Jack Dwyer, a Texan water company executive who’s dragged his family – wife (Lake Bell) and two young daughters – out to Unspecified Foreign Place for work. The Dwyers land, jetlagged and hungry, in the middle of a violent coup. A mob has waded into their hotel and is systematically executing anyone not wearing a bandana, waving a machete and screaming. Office jockey Jack must overcome his gee-shucks everymannerisms and become enough of an action hero to get his family away from the murderous locals.
The opening’s promising. A follow-shot through the hotel slowly makes it clear that Unspecified Foreign Place’s leader is in mortal danger, but we’re not sure from who. The tension’s handled deftly. When the leader eventually falls it’s a shocking and grisly end, one that the Dowdles know how to exploit.
It’s a breathless muddle from there. The odd plus point – Wilson’s surprisingly strong action chops, Lake Bell’s solid performance as a terrified mom – are spoiled by the archaic tone. The kids are annoying and the comic relief – a country music-loving local who calls himself Kenny Rogers – mildly offensive. Pierce Brosnan pops up as the Dwyer’s tour guide to terror, a booze-addled “businessman” whose sleazy zeal quickly, predictably gives way to Bond-lite gunplay once the revolution starts.
The Dowdles want you to take No Escape with a pinch of salt. The 70s title sequence, the kitsch pop references, the casting – they’re supposed to seem knowing in their silliness. But it’s hard to get away with such broad stereotyping without coming across as crass or cynical. This doesn’t feel like a pastiche, just a trip back to the past. Don’t drink the water.
• No Escape is released in the US on 28 August and in the UK on 4 September
