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Critics Consensus: No Escape's talented cast and taut B-movie thrills are unfortunately offset by its one-dimensional characters and uncomfortably retrograde worldview.
Critic Consensus: No Escape's talented cast and taut B-movie thrills are unfortunately offset by its one-dimensional characters and uncomfortably retrograde worldview.
All Critics (150) | Top Critics (32) | Fresh (69) | Rotten (81) | DVD (1)
No Escape takes the casual xenophobia of something like Taken, crossbreeds it with something altogether more noxious, then asks us to kick back and enjoy the ride. We don't. We can't. And the ride isn't that great to begin with.
No Escape is as accomplished as it is vicious.
No Escape is bare-bones, shameless, and too obnoxious to stay suspenseful for long.
Writer-director John Eric Dowdle makes the street action propulsive, bewildering and terrifyingly real, and things are just getting warmed up.
I won't make a case for No Escape being a good film; the first half is pretty good and the second half ranges from pretty bad to truly awful.
Dowdle sticks closely to the family's perspective, for better and for worse; though fairly effective at conveying their terror, he fails to establish any sort of social or political context for the story.
Brosnan is a pleasant surprise and the film is a heart stopping mix of white-knuckle action and compelling family drama.
I had to make an immediate appointment with my hairdresser to cover the 50 new grey hairs that sprung to life in that 2 hour movie!
In this situation, you do anything necessary, no matter how ugly, to protect what's most important; family
I don't know about you, but with the real-life killings in Tunisia so recent, I really have no appetite for this sort of thing being fictionalised and served up as entertainment.
No Escape plays into the worst fears of Americans abroad, where danger lurks around every corner for U.S. nationals, and compounds this jingoistic sense by fostering the notion that no other lives matter more than those of this one American family.
While the movie's storyline is simple, its action set pieces are so visceral and intense they had me on the edge of my seat right from the start.
A film that never got much advertisment and ends up being a very good film, We get about 5 of these a year, It's an edge of your seat action thriller that's kind of offensive in ways but still a great popcorn flick and it was nice to see Owen Wilson in a serious role for a change, The action was very good and full of suspense all the cast were great but Pierce Brosnan was brilliant but under used, The film has had some harsh reviews because critics don't like it when a film dares to step over certain lines, It's a film you watch enjoy then forget about.
Super Reviewer
Incredibly intense, No Escape is the story of a family's desperate fight for survival in the face of extreme circumstances. When Jack Dwyer moves his wife and kids to Southeast Asia after getting a job with an American company they get caught-up in a violent revolution and must find a way to get to the American embassy before they're captured and killed by the street mobs. Owen Wilson, Lake Bell, and Pierce Brosnan lead the cast, and give fairly good performances. And, the director uses some interesting slow motion techniques that intensify the action. Still, the pacing is rather slow in the first act, and the plot is pretty thin. Yet for a high-adrenaline chase film, No Escape works.
"No Escape" knows no subtlety. I was almost surprised that subtitles didn't appear throughout the movie notifying the audience of the messages and moments of pathos they were intended to perceive, in case those points were missed in the clunky script. It didn't help that the film's lead, Owen Wilson, was completely miscast -- unless a feckless, wimpy father was the hero Dowdle had in mind for his everyday American. If you are a fan of action and suspense who doesn't really care about characters or story, then the film might not be so bad for you. There are some exciting moments (even if they later succumb to the silly), so it's not a complete dud. Overall, "No Escape" is a completely forgettable film.
An American family is transferred overseas and a chance for a better life only to find themselves in the middle of a bloody anti-American revolution soon after their arrival. Wilson and Bell are not given much or long to convince us that they are a couple but by the conclusion you sorta feel that way, as if they are. Brosnan again tips his hat to that Brit spy background of his irreverently and to good effect. The politics might be slightly different nowadays, but there's enough residual feeling here to give the on the ground action a true punch, true feeling, and my palms were sweating throughout.
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