Inescapable (2012)
Average Rating: 4.2/10
Reviews Counted: 21
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 17
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 3.7/10
Critic Reviews: 10
Fresh: 1 | Rotten: 9
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.7/5
User Ratings: 284
My Rating
Movie Info
This politically charged and emotionally powerful thriller follows a successful businessman who suddenly finds his life turned upside down when his journalist daughter goes missing during her trip to his hometown of Damascus. He knows that the reason for his exile is tied to his daughter's disappearance. His first trip home in over 30 years turns into a frantic quest to rescue his daughter while reconnecting with the love of his life.
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Cast
-
Alexander Siddig
Adib Abdel Kareem, Adib... -
Marisa Tomei
Fatima -
Jay Anstey
Muna -
Joshua Jackson
Paul -
Oded Fehr
Sayid -
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Inescapable Trailer & Photos
All Critics (21) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (4) | Rotten (17)
The film tries to meld politically charged personal drama with the action-movie tropes you'd expect in a story set in the Middle East. (Chase through a crowded marketplace? Brawl at the hamam? Check!)
Top CriticThe plot unfolds at a nice clip, but at no point does director Ruba Nadda evade expectations.
One hopes "Inescapable" is only a momentary stumble for this promising filmmaker.
A Canadian nonthriller that plays like a heavily sedated hybrid of "Taken" and "Not Without My Daughter" ...
Inescapable is Nadda's first foray into thriller territory, and her inexperience shows in awkwardly mounted fight scenes and clumsy car chases, not to mention an almost fatally explanatory script.
Muddled and inert despite the best intentions, this inescapably dull thriller plays like a Middle Eastern take on Liam Neeson's "Taken."
Clearly meaning Inescapable as an act of love, Ms. Nada, a Canadian filmmaker with Syrian/Palestinian parents, has instead done a great disservice to her gene pool and our film-loving sensibilities. Irksome would be a more appropriate title.
The movie suffers from the conflict between its potboiler instincts and the filmmaker's understandable need to acknowledge the brutality of Syria's secretive regime.
Doesn't have the juice normally associated with such violent entertainment. Its interest in characterization is admirable, but there's little firepower where it counts the most.
The movie could just as well be set in Islamabad, Nairobi or any city Westerners find threatening. (It was filmed, in fact, in Johannesburg.) It would look about right on a cable channel at 9 p.m.
This international thriller-sparked by a nice, unexpected Marisa Tomei performance-starts off promisingly but trails off into cheap melodrama.
It's a deeply confused movie, sometimes productively so.
Ruba Nadda's 2012 Toronto International Film Festival Gala Presentation is an okay actioner of the political mystery intrigue type.
Feels like a not-very-skillful attempt at making a certain kind of movie...repeatedly trips over its own shoelaces, calling attention to distinct story-telling shortcomings.
The film spins its wheels for almost an hour until collapsing under the weight of exposition that renders the mystery nearly besides the point.
A thriller based in Syria with grainy photography, absurd coincidences, one that is stiffly acted with stilted dialogue.
Audience Reviews for Inescapable
Super Reviewer
"Inescapable" is at best a half-baked thriller. Now, if only it had been a fully baked thriller, we could have gotten some fun out of the whole thing. As it is, there are some nice moments, especially the opening lock picking scene, and fine shots but not much beyond that. On the minus side, there is almost a running joke out of quickly obtained visas and characters here tend to get rescued not out of their own resourcefulness but out of somebody showing out of the blue. You need more than that level of potential watchfulness and a few mentions to fully document pre-civil war Syria as a police state which does not exactly come as a surprise. What is desperately needed in the movie is a broader perspective not only on the country but on Adib, along with more dramatic depth.
Super Reviewer
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