Respond to these rapid questions in our No Escape quiz and we will tell you which No Escape character you are. Play it now.
The last couple of weeks of August are typically a rough road for movie fans. This is because studios use this time to dump the cinematic dregs that they figured were too weak to survive during either the summer box-office derby or the equally competitive fall awards season. They do this during a period of time when they might conceivably make a few bucks off of audiences willing to sit through anything new at the multiplex. Trust me, movies don’t get much worse than “No Escape,” which is a terrible and creepily exploitative attempt at making a thriller. It is such low-grade trash that it is too silly and stupid to be as offensive as it frequently comes close to being throughout the film.
Jack Dwyer, played by Owen Wilson, is a down-on-his-luck businessman who hopes to reverse his sagging fortunes by packing up his entire family to work in the clean water program of some massive American conglomerate in their outpost in an unnamed Asian city. Annie, played by Lake Bell, is an incredibly patient wife, and Lucy and Beaze, played by Sterling Jerins and Clare Geare, are adorable moppet daughters. (Although never identified by name, the film was shot in Thailand. This fact will probably not be emphasized too heavily in Thailand’s Chamber of Commerce videos; however, it will probably get heavy play in the videos produced by countries that are Thailand’s neighbors.) The family has hardly settled into their hotel room when things begin to go awry; the television, the phone, and the internet are all out of service, and when Jack goes out the next morning in search of a newspaper, he winds up in the middle of a brutal street clash between police and protesters, and he barely makes it back to the hotel before it closes its doors.
As it turns out, revolutionaries enraged over the recent American takeover of their water plant have assassinated the corrupt prime minister, overthrown the government, and are now hellbent on finding and murdering any and all foreigners stranded in the chaos. They have also been responsible for the murder of the prime minister. The Dwyers are able to make it to the roof of their hotel, which is a popular place for American tourists to stay, but they are then subjected to gunfire from a helicopter and are forced to make their escape by jumping to the roof of the building next door. Now that they are trapped in a country where they do not speak the language and where nearly everyone wants to kill them on sight, the Dwyers are fighting for their lives in order to stay alive until they can figure out a way to leave the country. Hammond, played by Pierce Brosnan, is a mysterious British man who is always able to show up just when the script requires an improbable rescue. He provides assistance to the protagonists on occasion.
But you shouldn’t waste any more time and start this No Escape quiz.
It is possible to assume that “No Escape” is Eli Roth’s most recent film due to its clumsy filmmaking, overt sadism (with the expected shootings, slashings, and burnings supplemented by an attempted rape and a little girl being forced at gunpoint to shoot her own father), and borderline xenophobia. In point of fact, it is the brainchild of filmmaker brothers John Erick and Drew Dowdle, whose previous collaborations, such as the American version of “Quarantine,” “Devil,” and “As Above, So Below,” have told stories about ordinary dopes struggling to escape from a confined space while being menaced by some terrifying menace or another. “Quarantine” The genre focus of “No Escape” may have shifted from horror to action, and the size of the confined space may have increased, but other than those two changes, the movie (which John directed and Drew produced, with the two of them working together on the screenplay) is essentially the same. As has been the case with their previous efforts, the results this time around are pretty dismal; the screenplay is bad boilerplate with the occasional lapse into outright buffoonery (I have seen comedies that have not inspired the kind of laughter that resulted at the screening I attended when Jack asks his wife “You okay?” after a particularly hair-raising moment), the characters we are meant to be rooting for are uninteresting, and the action is never particularly exciting; however, the way in which it is presented
No Escape Quiz
You still have to deal with the fact that the film is so uncommitted to its ostensible cause that it not only fails to identify the country in which it is set, presumably so as not to offend any potential ticket-selling market, but it also refuses to give any voice (other than “Kill Kill”) to the thugs who are the primary antagonists of the story. Even if you are able to get past the potentially offensive notion of examining the problems of the Third World through the eyes of Then again, it is perhaps just as well that the screenplay avoids the political aspects for the most part because the one scene in which they come to the forefront is an absolute embarrassment that drags the already sluggish proceeding to a dead halt from which it never recovers. In this scene, the Pierce Brosnan character relates the evils of American companies who come in and seize Third World industries in order to maximize profits.
Also, you will find out which character are you in this No Escape quiz.
“No Escape” is an ugly, ugly film in which no one comes out of it completely unscathed. It is dramatically inert, unintentionally funny (especially during the largely incompetent usage of slow-motion photography that borders on parody at times), and almost pornographically violent at times. For Patrick Wilson, this is a strange throwback to the days when he was shoehorned into genre films (such as “Anaconda,” “The Haunting,” and “Behind Enemy Lines”) that were uncomfortable fits for his laconic charms, and for Pierce Brosnan, this is the latest in a depressingly long string of films in which he is far superior to the material that he has been given to work with. It is beyond my ability to comprehend why they would choose to participate in something that is so self-serving, malicious, and deceptive; however, regardless of the reasons behind their decision, the end result is that they have been cast in one of the most disagreeable films of the year.
For more personality quizzes check this: The Last Witch Hunter Quiz.
