What is No Escape about? Prime Video movie explained

Your guide to No Escape, the ridiculously entertaining 2015 action thriller that stars Owen Wilson and Pierce Bronson, and is currently available on Amazon Prime Video.

No Escape was one of the sleeper hits of 2015. Writer-director John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle were previously known for horror, having crafted the likes of Quarantine, Devil, and As Above, So Below. So action was something of a pivot for the brothers.

Although Owen Wilson had toyed with the genre in Behind Enemy Lines, he was still very much a comedy and drama man, meaning the movie was also a change of gears for him.

But audiences loved it, with No Escape making more than $50 million at the global box office, from a reported budget of just $5 million. So if you are wondering what so appealed to fans of the genre, here’s the movie’s plot, plus detail of what inspired it.

What is No Escape about? Prime Video movie explained

No Escape stars Owen Wilson as Jack Dwyer, an engineer who relocates to an unnamed country in Southeast Asia, together with his wife Annie (Lake Bell) and two daughters. When they arrive at the airport, they run into a British traveler called Hammond (Pierce Brosnan). Who will become important in a moment…

Mere hours after settling into their hotel, armed rebels kill the country’s Prime Minister, kicking off riots, and an attempted coup. This means all hell breaks loose, and Owen Wilson has to go into Liam Neeson/Taken mode to protect his family.

And while Jack Dwyer doesn’t have a similarly particular set of skills, he does get help from Hammond, who appears to be an operative for the British government, allowing Brosnan to channel his James Bond persona as he helps to save the day.

The inspiration behind the movie

Speaking to Creative Screenwriting in November 2015, John Erick Dowdle revealed that the script very much had its roots in real life, and a family trip to Thailand, the country where they ultimately ended up shooting the movie.

“Right before we got to Thailand, a coup overthrew the Prime Minister,” says John. “There’d been no previous warning. There was a feeling of anxiety in the air. So I started thinking about that. If it went badly, what would I do?”

John started working on the story in 2007 with his brother Drew, but as he explains: “All sorts of things happened after that. The Arab Spring, the attack on the Taj Mahal Hotel in India… so we studied all of those things to see what parts would make it into the script. We have two little sisters who are very similar to the girls in the movie, and we’ve traveled with them extensively. A lot of our own family made it into the script.”

No Escape is currently available on Amazon Prime Video.