No Escape (2015) – Review

If I was to base my movie watching purely on reviews than I would never watch No Escape. They painted this as a horrible movie, which just like The Impossible, only focussed on white family abroad needing to survive, while also showing the local people negatively. Oh yeah, and the actors were supposedly miscast as well. Luckily I’m a very stubborn person, so I decided to form my own opinion about this movie.

The Dwyer family has decided to move to an unnamed Asian country. Father Jack (Owen Wilson) has been offered a job there at a water filtering company and his wife Annie (Lake Bell) and two young daughters join him. The journey there goes alright and through the help of an Englishman who knows the country well (Pierce Brosnan) they end up in a nice hotel. When Jack heads outside the next morning to get a newspaper he ends up experiencing some riots. Even though he manages to get away from them he soon finds out that the anger is directed towards foreigner and that they are being killed. He needs to get back to the hotel, which is under attack as well, to save his family. Will he be able to bring himself and them to safety?

 Unfortunately situations as shown in this movie happen a lot in reality. The fear of experiencing such a situation where you not only have to save yourself but bring frightened, helpless children to safety as well is convincingly shown here. As a father with several daughters I really could imagine experiencing something like that and was watching the movie with my hands sweating as I saw what this family was experiencing. Both Wilson and Bell are good in their role and the chaos and unpredictability of a revolution where you are not sure you’ll survive are always present. Brosnan only has a small role, but effectively uses his limited screen time. No Escape won’t be able to please everyone, but it had me hooked and emotionally invested.