NO ESCAPE (2015)

Rated: R

STARS: Owen Wilson, Lake Bell, Pierce Brosnan
DIRECTOR: John Erick Dowdle
GENRE:Action-Thriller


Appreciate a good plot? Not the movie for you. Enjoy character development? Not the movie for you. Like balls-to-the-wall action in an edge of your seat thriller?  Si, senor, this da movie for you! Which means that after the prologue and the who, what, when, and where have been established, No Escape is essentially one long continuous action sequence.

Texas businessman Jack Dwyer (Owen Wilson), his wife, Annie (Lake Bell), and their two young daughters have arrived in an unspecified southeast Asian country, where he has been transferred by his company. Just in time for the assassination of the prime minister and a revolution in the making. Bands of roving killers sweep through the streets, invading the tourist hotels and executing Americans and their sympathizers on the spot. (It seems they don't like us.) 

 Jack finds himself careening through the streets with an angry mob in pursuit. He must make it back to the hotel and collect his family and get the hell outta Dodge. If they can. And that's what No Escape is about. They run and jump from rooftop to rooftop, from alleyway to alleyway, dodging bullets. An expatriate they have befriended, named Hammond (Pierce Brosnan), falls in with them and is able to provide some cover fire. He may be ex-CIA. Or he may just be M.I.A. In a rare moment where the five of them are able to catch their breath, he intimates--in so many words--that all the stink is a reaction to American Imperialism. (So what else is new?) 

A deeper film might have explored some of the politics behind the turmoil, but that is not the intent here. The movie knows what it wants to do, and it's good at what it does. The only story question being: Will they survive? (Much like Robert Redford in All Is Lost.)  Unfortunately, it is telegraphed who is going to make it and who isn't (for anyone who has seen three movies and can put two and two together). Predictability in a film can be a bummer and make it just another ho-hummer, but things are moving so fast, and you came here primarily to get your adrenaline pumping anyway, so you're not going to dwell on it. 

Owen Wilson, with his basset hound mug (and I mean that in the nicest possible way), seems a peculiar choice for the part of a man who will be thrust into the role of becoming a do-or-die hero, but he grows on you. Lake Bell grows on you too. She doesn't possess Angelina Jolie features, but she has a presence that I find appealing, and sexy even. So I'm going looking for more of her work. 

Grade:  B

JILL'S TAKE

A nail-biter from start to finish. (And if you don't bite your nails? You will by the time this film ends.) The thing that impressed me was how the suspense kept building. And speaking of buildings, the scene where they have to heave their kids onto another roof to escape the angry mob is truly heart-stopping. (It's in every trailer of the movie so I'm not ruining anything.) Usually in these chase movies, I get bored after awhile. Not this time. Whether Owen Wilson's terrified family is running through an unfamiliar city, a blown-up hotel, or a bombed out American Embassy, the tension created is relentless.   

Who is director/screenwriter John Eric Dowdle and what has done in the past? Not much. A third place award from the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards for directing and writing As Above, So Below (2014). This tells me he knows his way around cinematic scariness. And he's only 42. So I look forward to more of his directorial efforts.

As for what I didn't like? At one point, the Pierce Brosnan character gives a lengthy explanation of why American corporations are to blame for all this unrest. Ho hum. When I'm on the edge of my seat, completely wrapped up in a "will-they-or-won't-they-escape" drama, I don't need a sermon. Another thing that made No Escape great escapist entertainment was the use of silence. Although Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders are credited with writing the musical score, it was sparingly used -- to great effect.

Grade: B +

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS--2011

Rated: PG-13

Stars: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates

Written and directed by Woody Allen

Genre: Romantic comedy

It's all about finding one's place.

Gil, (Owen Wilson) a Hollywood "hack" screenwriter who aspires to be a novelist, has come to Paris with his fiancee and her parents. The parents are on a business trip. His material girl, Inez, (Rachel McAdams) is all about shopping. Gil--an incurable romantic--has a fantasy about living in the City of Light during the golden age of the twenties, where he could rub elbows with the legendary artists and writers of the Lost Generation. He talks about chucking Hollywood and moving to Paris. Neither Inez--who thinks he's gone off the deep end-- nor her stuffy parents, understand him.

Gil ends up walking the streets alone at night, and at the stroke of midnight, a vintage Peugeot pulls up and he is ushered into the vehicle to join a group of revelers inside. In short order it becomes apparent that he has entered a time warp, as he in turn meets F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, and a host of other literary and artistic figures. He even gets the opportunity to have his novel-in-progress critiqued by Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates). Then there is Adriana, (Marion Cotillard) an alluring flapper who may be stealing his heart.

Midnight In Paris is peppered with Woody Allen's trademark philosophical musings about life and death, as it meanders through the winding streets of the city and of time--arriving at a small, yet comforting epiphany (if you've spent most of your life wondering why life isn't very satisfying) about why it's imperative for us to BE HERE NOW.

A charmingly quirky movie, Midnight In Paris is much like the Parisians themselves. They won't wear white tennis sneakers on the city streets, as if that were some kind of major fashion gaffe, but then, they don't mind if you bring your dog into the cafe and let him sit at the table with you while you dine.

Sometimes finding one's place is as much about finding one's place in time as it is anything else. Midnight In Paris is time well spent with a bunch of fascinating characters who spring to life from the pages of history.

Grade: B +