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| Owen Wilson and Lake Bell lead their girls to safety in No Escape |
NO ESCAPE is political thriller as video game. On one level, it is quite serviceable and suspenseful entertainment with a simple set-up: a family of innocents abroad find themselves unwittingly caught up in a civil war and must flee the country.
No Escape (15, 103mins) Director: John Erick Dowdle Stars: Owen Wilson, Lake Bell, Pierce Brosnan
The location is South East Asia on the border of Vietnam, presumably Thailand (there is a flourishing sex industry) but not named. Pandering to all Middle American fears and prejudices of “abroad” the country is portrayed as a backwards, unstable, anti-Western hell-hole. For the Dwyer family, arriving from Texas, it is a rude awakening. One minute they are ordering room service in their luxury high rise hotel, the next fleeing from a bandana-wearing mob of murdering locals who are shooting foreigners on sight.
The suspense is well-handled and interest is heightened by the casting. Owen Wilson plays daddy Dwyer, Jack, an engineer for a water company who is relocating his family after career disappointment back home. It is a rare straight role for the comic star and he brings a likeable Everyman quality and sense of vulnerability.
He is no He Man and you genuinely fear for his safety and his ability to protect his family: wife Annie (the appealing but underused Lake Bell), and daughters, (Sterling Jerins) and Beeze (Claire Geare), aged 12 and eight. The sudden eruption of violence and panic on the streets which embroils Jack as he saunters off to buy a newspaper is convincing and chilling. Evading the mob he rushes back to the hotel and spends the rest of the picture trying to usher his family to safety.
Coming to the family’s aid at a fortuitous moment is Pierce Brosnan as a roguish Brit, Hammond, with an unconvincing cockney accent. The first half is exciting and compelling and there is one gasp-inducing scene parents will not forget in a hurry: to escape the mob Jack chucks his children from one rooftop to another over a yawning drop.
Eventually, however, it becomes clear that there is little more to the picture than a series of chases and narrow escapes. The relationships between the characters do not evolve in any meaningful way and there is no exploration of the political situation at all; the eruption of brutal violence on the streets exists solely to imperil our American family and provide us with vicarious thrills.
Jack learns that the mob violence is a response to US corporate colonialism but this crude attempt to avoid accusations of cultural insensitivity is the filmmakers wanting to have their cake and eat it.
The more repellent the violence (there is an attempted rape against Annie) the more the brazen exploitation of “Third World” troubles begins to grate and feel distasteful. Still, for those looking for an action thriller like those made frequently in the 1980s and 1990s, No Escape offers solid entertainment.
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| Meryl Streep is a rock chick in Ricki And The Flash |
Ricki And The Flash (12A, 105mins) Director: Jonathan Demme Stars: Meryl Streep, Rick Springfield, Kevin Kline, Mamie Gummer
Meryl Streep is a rock chick! That alone should be enough to get curious punters through the door to watch Ricki And The Flash. There is, it seems, nothing she cannot do, including playing a down-at-heel leather-clad rocker whooping it up well past her prime. Like Streep’s character, Ricki Randazzo, the picture is a bit ramshackle but has bags of unexpected charm and a heart very much in the right place.
Scripted by Diablo Cody (Juno) and directed by Jonathan Demme (still best known for Silence Of The Lambs), it is a lively and unpretentious domestic drama in which Ricki faces a reckoning for her personal and professional choices after being suddenly summoned home by her ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline). The reason? Their grown-up daughter Julie (Mamie Gummer, Streep’s real-life daughter) is near suicidal after being ditched by her new husband.
Almost penniless, Ricki leaves her band in California, now performing in a two-bit bar, and returns to Indianapolis and the home shared by wealthy perfectionist Pete and second wife Maureen (Audra McDonald). This is Ricki/Streep’s show, though, and Julie’s travails are just a catalyst to force Ricki to confront various unresolved issues; with her ex-husband, two sons and adoring band member Greg (real-life musician Rick Springfield), as well as with her daughter.
Streep is terrific playing a character who, on paper, commands little sympathy: a spiky artiste who seemingly put career before family and proudly voted for George W Bush. The rest of the cast are strong too, in particular Kline and Springfield, and despite some longueurs this is greatly enjoyable.
VERDICT: 3/5
American Ultra (15, 96mins) Director: Nima Nourizadeh Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart
American Ultra aims to be a comedy romp that riffs on the Bourne movies: a scrofulous drop-out with a dope habit discovers that he is actually a highly trained government killing machine, Jason Bourne-like. It is a so-so idea as amnesiac assassins are a bit passé, but could work if it was very funny.
Unfortunately, the picture barely raises a chuckle and much of that is down to the miscasting of Jesse Eisenberg in the lead, the fast-talking actor best known for playing Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network.
Intense, cerebral and utterly humourless, Eisenberg kills whatever comedy existed in the screenplay by Max Landis stone dead. Instead of being genial and engaging, his stringy-haired character Mike, who works in a convenience store in rural West Virginia and has an inexplicably devoted girlfriend, Phoebe (Kristen Stewart), is charmless, nervy and uptight.
The part required someone with the easygoing appeal of Chris Pratt, but for much of the time it is hard to divine whether the picture is even intended to be a comedy. This is compounded by grim violence sitting uneasily alongside daft plotting and broad, silly characterisations: notably, the villain of the piece, a cartoonishly smarmy and evil CIA chief (Topher Grace). Stewart (from the Twilight series) is likeable and there are moments when she and Eisenberg work well together, dramatically rather than comedically, but both belong in a different film.
VERDICT:2/5
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