Owen Wilson‘s new movie, No Escape hits theaters on August 26th and critics are not too impressed.
No Escape is an upcoming 2015 action thriller film directed by John Erick Dowdle, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother, Drew Dowdle. The film stars Owen Wilson, Lake Bell, and Pierce Brosnan, and tells the story of a businessman trapped with his family in a war zone.
The film is scheduled to be released on August 26, 2015. The film had special sneak previews in the Philippines earlier this month.
No Escape centers around an American family that moves to Southeast Asia. However, they find themselves caught in the middle of a coup, and they frantically look for a safe escape in an environment where foreigners are being immediately executed.
As one A.V. Club commenter put it, “it’s essentially a zombie movie with racist caricatures of Southeast Asian people instead of zombies.”
Currently, Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 67%, based on 9 reviews, with an average rating of 5.5/10. But, one film critic is not too happy with the movie. Alonso Duralde calls out the movie for only focusing on a group of white people who might get killed instead of the innocent non-white civilians caught in the middle of all this chaos.
It’s up to history whether or not future students categorize “No Escape” alongside the work of those earlier auteurs, but it’s fair to say that this new movie combines genuine filmmaking skill and effective action editing with a queasily racist subtext, one in which a bloody revolution in Asia only matters insofar as some white people might get killed.
But, he’s not the only one. Salon.com recently called out Hollywood for constantly portraying Asia as evil and filled with “dehumanizing stereotypes”.
