The “Brothers Dowdle” (director John Erick and co-writer Drew) know how to wring tension out of a hokey scene – witness the effective claustrophobia of As Above, So Below – and the opening movement of this brainless actioner boasts some bravura button-pushing involving precipitous heights and falling children. Sadly, things go downhill from there as Owen Wilson struggles to save his family from the caricatured revolting hordes who besiege their generic south-east Asian hotel-cum-hellhole.
Pierce Brosnan plays a gurning Brit with “special” talents who aids the family on their way, providing Basil Expositionesque background information presumably intended to undercut the nice-westerners-v-murderous-foreigners vibe that blossoms into shrieking xenophobia.
