The blanketing of the Asians as savages is compounded by the decision not to name the country the film takes place in – carrying the worrying connotation that this must just be what all of Asia is like. The film doesn’t feature a single sympathetic Asian character (bar a one-joke sidekick of Hammond’s who’s named Kenny Rogers because he’s obsessed with Kenny Rogers), and gives the locals no voice in proceedings. The story follows a group of innocent Westerners who are victimised by the savage foreigners. Not only that, but the film is problematic in its depiction of West vs. At times the film wallows in its own grimness, and it leaves a bad taste. The scenarios the family find themselves in are designed to ratchet up the sense of threat, but it begins to feel inorganic: the enemy enforcing actions that feel deliberately inserted just to shock.

Unfortunately, while the film’s oppressive atmosphere of claustrophobia is well conveyed – these are strangers in the middle of a warzone who don’t know the language or the lay of the land – the screenplay takes things a little too far at times, in ways that don’t feel natural. There is genuine tension to be found, though, and the family’s bid for survival is soundtracked by a pleasingly propulsive score. The over-use of slo-mo to try and liven things up is a misjudgement, while some moments verge on the laughable – and not necessarily in the good way (at one point Jack has to very literally fling his young daughters from the roof of one building to another – it shouldn’t be funny at all, but you may well find yourself stifling a giggle). The action is decent, but it’s all rather improbable. Primarily, though, No Escape is an action/chase movie, and while it’s a passably good one, it’s not without serious issues.

With any other actor in the role, Hammond may have jarred and been an awkward note amid all the earnest survival action, but Brosnan is so good that his sheer force of charisma carries him through. He’s a welcome blast of comic relief in a film that rarely lets up the intensity. The overriding tone of No Escape is ultra-serious and one of grim nastiness – Brosnan, however, must have thought he was in a different film: his Hammond is a riot. Stealing the show, though, is former James Bond star Pierce Brosnan as a long-time ex-pat whom the family befriends over the course of their first day in Asia. Wilson’s easy affability serves him well amid the growing chaos, as the rebels take to the streets and start hunting down tourists and Westerners, while Lake Bell’s vulnerability as she tries to protect her children is particularly authentic. His family – wife Annie (Lake Bell), and young daughters Lucy and Beeze (Sterling Jerins and Claire Geare) – have mixed feelings about the move, and while their fears are perfectly natural anxieties about uplifting their lives to the other side of the world, unbeknownst to them, a group of armed rebels are about launch a brutal coup and give them something to really be afraid of. The plot sees Wilson’s engineer Jack Dwyer flying his family to Southeast Asia to start a new life. No Escape might not prove that he’s a brilliant dramatic actor, but the fact that he’s very evidently not an action star works very much in his favour here. His lackadaisical comic timing is perfectly suited to comedy, but he’s never really shown that he has many more strings to his bow than that. Of all the actors to star in a gritty action film, Owen Wilson is probably pretty far down the list.

No escape movie