Gire: 'No Escape' scares up cheap thrills, terror

It would be a mistake to assume that Owen Wilson's thriller "No Escape" aspires to be anything more than a cheesy, adrenaline-charged late summer horror movie.

This violent sensory assault begs to be promoted with every cheap critics' cliché possible: a white-knuckle, nail-biter, edge-of-your-seat, roller coaster ride into the depths of terror!

The script, written by director John Erick Dowdle and his brother Drew, slaps a thin political indictment of greedy Western capitalism exploiting fourth-world countries on this story. Who are they kidding?

Reduced to its essence, "No Escape" gives us one-dimensional American family members struggling to survive faceless, objectified Asians out to purge their unnamed country of all Westerners by killing them with guns, knives, machetes, trucks, clubs and really hateful looks.

Jack Dwyer (Wilson), wife Annie (Lake Bell, replacing original star Michelle Monaghan) and their daughters (Sterling Jerins, Claire Geare) arrive in what appears to be an exotic South Asian country that could be a perfect setting for the next season of "The Bachelorette."

On the jet over, they meet a garrulous Brit named Hammond (erstwhile 007 Pierce Brosnan) who knows the local scene quite well. He even knows Kenny Rogers (Sahajak Boonthanakit), a friendly cabdriver who loves the pop/country singer whose name he adopted. (Remember the cliché: any time a big-name actor appears in a seemingly insignificant role, he'll be back later to reveal his true identity.)

It doesn't take long before "No Escape" devolves into "Swiss Family Robinson" meets "Hotel Rwanda."

The locals, unhappy that Jack's new corporate employer has taken control of the country's water supplies, rebel by shooting tourists in the streets, then systematically roving through posh hotels, hacking Western residents to death with machetes.

Jack instantly summons up his stoner Jason Bourne to protect his loved ones, whisking them through hails of bullets, tank shell bombardments, murderous throngs of protesters and situations so loaded with abject terror and suspense, it hardly matters that Dowdle is such a second-rate filmmaker.

"No Escape" marks Dowdle's relatively best film after his genre offerings "Quarantine" and "As Above, So Below." He excels in pounding our pulses with horrific situations and sporadic, eye-shielding displays of gore - augmented by a nerve-jangling, over-the-top score by Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders.

Even so, Dowdle proves to be his own worst asset when it comes to the two most intense set pieces (one involving throwing children off a roof). His awkward slow-motion shots mangle the scenes, stretching them out, thereby diminishing, not increasing, the suspense.

Weirdly enough, the movie's original title "The Coup" had to be changed because, as the Hollywood Reporter reported, the word "coup" confused viewers during test screenings.

Does that suggest viewers who don't know the meaning of "coup" will like "No Escape" better than those who do?