A 2015 action/thriller film directed by John Erick Dowdle (who cowrote the screenplay with his brother Drew), starring Owen Wilson, Lake Bell, and Pierce Brosnan.
Jack Dwyer (Wilson) is an American who just moved to an unnamed Asian country for work along with his wife, Annie (Bell), and their two daughters. Shortly after they arrive, civil unrest breaks out and rebels start massacring foreigners. The film focuses on the Dwyer family's attempt to escape the country, only to find, well, that there might be no escape. Assisting them is Hammond (Brosnan), a British man they've met and befriended.
Has no relation to 1994 movie of the same name starring Ray Liotta or the 2020 film.
No Escape provides examples of:
- Action Survivor: Jack Dwyer and Hammond, but to some extent the rest of his family. They're not trying to stop the soldiers or end the fighting, just make it to safety alive.
- Alternate History: Considering that it neighbors Vietnam, the movie's unnamed country is an area that in our world is part of either Laos or Cambodia. The appearance of a French national on the hotel's rooftop (who translates the rebel crowd's "Blood for Water" chant for the protagonists) hints that like the aforementioned countries of Indochina it may also have once been a French colony.
- Arc Words: "Blood for Water", or anything in between, is the literal reason why the rebels decided to take on everyone by storm, killing anyone who is involved in the water company that is said to have bankrupted their country.
- The Atoner: Hammond lost his family in the same way Jack will if he doesn't get a hold of himself, due to a water company exacting a large debt against the locals.
- Attempted Rape: During the garden scene, Annie is nearly raped by the rebels' leader while Jack is Forced to Watch, until Hammond and "Kenny Rogers" come in to rescue them.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Despite not understanding them, the old man from the newspaper shop assists Jack and family by hiding them in the garden while deflecting the insurgents' suspicion, only because Jack paid a few dollars to him and after he saw he had kids.
- Big Bad: The rebel leader with the red bandana.
- Big Damn Heroes: Hammond and "Kenny Rogers", of all people, saved Jack and his family from the insurgents right before the nasty stuff happened to them in a garden across town.
- City with No Name: The setting country is unnamed.
- Covers Always Lie: The poster shown here would make one think the American family are trapped in the middle of a conflict between rebels and the country's army. Actually, what's in the film seems to show both sides joined together and killing everyone else.
- Death from Above: Helicopter-borne insurgents inflict this on a group of foreigners trapped on a rooftop, opening fire on them with AK-47's. Only sheer luck keeps Jack and his family from getting hit in the barrage.
- The Dreaded: The bloodthirsty and ax-crazy rebels have no qualms against massacring hundreds of foreign nationals and risking incurring the wrath of the United States by taking the American Embassy and murdering everyone inside... but even they know better than to pick a fight with the People's Army of Vietnam.
- Dressing as the Enemy: After the escape from the office building, the Dwyers take clothing from the dead and leave on a moped. They run into a rebel procession, and they do not attract any attention because their faces are covered just like the rebels.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: Hammond kills a handful of insurgents during family's escape, then runs down the building with a gunshot wound in his chest. Then, he finally shoots the driver of an army truck who was about to chase them on the road, crushing him along with the truck instead.
- Everyone Has Standards: When Jack and his family, disguised as locals, try to pass beyond the rebels one of them sees them through their disguise. He still don't report them to the others implying that maybe he has some morals.
- Far East: The film's setting is an AU version of where Cambodia should be, close to the Vietnam border.
- The Government: It's implied that the U.K. and U.S. governments is also probably to blame for the destabilization of the country (and other similar situations around the world). At least according to Hammond, whom appears to be a government spook of some kind.
- Gunpoint Banter: At the near end, some Jerkass insurgents have both Jack and his daughter, Lucy, at gunpoint. With Lucy forced to point a revolver at her father's head.
- Hope Spot: The film is one long chain of these, each one worse than the last. Yay, a helicopter is approaching the rooftop where all the foreign tourists are! Oh no, it's actually the rebels! Yay, they've reached the American embassy! Oh no, everyone's been killed!
- Irony: The lives of a family of Americans are saved by escaping into Communist Vietnam.
- Knight Templar: The insurgents killed the prime minister only because they could not pay the water bills.
- Language Barrier: An interesting plot point, as a "What If?" situation when survivors are stranded in the middle of an urban side of the world with no one able to understand a word you're saying.
- Mama Bear: Annie displays this when she bludgeons the violent rebel leader to death with an oar to save her husband and daughter.
- Militaries Are Useless: Except for the beginning of the film, where some soldiers are shown as Jack's family goes through the city, at no point is the unnamed country's military depicted. All the military hardware that is shown (the helicopter, the tank, the trucks) are in the hands of the rebels, who appear to be in complete control, at least in the capital, and there are no scenes where they are shown fighting the military; it's implied that the uprising is as much a coup d'etat as it is a revolution, and large parts of the army, if not the army as a whole, seem to have defected to the revolutionaries. When Jack goes to the American Embassy, he finds a dead US Marine at the checkpoint, moments later he sees a few rebels leaving the seemingly empty embassy (and destroying it) without apparently anyone finding anyone to kill, implying that the other Marines and had fled with the embassy staff, or that they got slaughtered.
- Papa Wolf: Jack isn't just trying to save himself, much of his worry comes from the fact he's trying to protect his two young daughters.
- Potty Failure: Beeze is forced to pee her pants while hiding from the rebels.
- The Reveal: The reason why the insurgency broke out is due to the aggressive pushes of the water company towards the city. The rebels could not pay the bills of the foreign company and decided to stage a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown against anyone that tries to justify the company or escape their wrath.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: The coup is violent, bloody, and not only involves civilians but actively targets them.
- Rules Lawyer: The People's Army of Vietnam. They are prepared to shoot Jack and his family as they're slowly drifting towards the border, but once they're in, the soldiers turn their guns towards the rebels, saying that firing on Jack's family would constitute an act of war.
- Slo-Mo Big Air: The most famous shot in the trailer is a bullet-time shot of Jack throwing his daughter from a roof to safety on another rooftop.
- Too Dumb to Live: Nobody thinks to pick up a gun from any of the dead terrorists and fight back. Granted, many of them had blackjacks, but you'd think at least one of the tourists or Jack himself would have picked up a firearm.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: So as not to insult anyone, great lengths were gone to in order to make the setting as vague as possible. Despite being filmed in Thailand, no Thai is spoken or seen written (except on the hotel sign). The police officers' shields have a modified Cambodian script, and dialogue is a mix of several languages.
- White Male Lead: Despite being set in an Asian country, the film is focused solely on Jack Dwyer and his desire to protect his family. Justified in that he's being targeted specifically for his status being a symbol of the economic imperialism that caused the riots in the first place.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Well, completely insane, poor freedom fighters.
- Yellow Peril: The film initially plays up the exoticness of the setting, but later on all (and only) Asian characters become a threat to Jack and his family. Though subverted in the end when the family is saved by the Vietnamese Army, "Kenny Rogers" being one of the good guys and Hammond's Number Two, the indiscriminate nature of the killings against locals, and the large number of locals willing to help Jack's family escape, even at risk to themselves. Also, one of the rebels decides to spare Jack and his family instead of killing'em on spot or report'em like he was supposed to..
