There are certainly many things this film has in common with Owen Wilson's other "serious" action movie BEHIND ENEMY LINES, with him as a fish out of water in a hostile foreign country just trying to get to safety and gradually being pushed more and more into action hero territory as the film goes on. This film is a little different in that Wilson is just a totally average employee and having to protect his wife and two young daughters. The selling point for a suspense-based film like this is realism, which the makers excellently set up in the first half but completely lose gradually as the film goes on due to some utterly head-scratching decisions...
* Wilson barely manages to get back to his hotel room in time to warn his family but has to go back for his oldest daughter swimming in the downstairs pool, leaving his wife to hold down the hotel. Some rebels butcher the family across the way from her in a very effectively tense scene and she bars the door with her body. For some reason, the rebels just give up on breaking down the door? Okay, maybe they were tired... let's go on to the next one.
* Wilson's family is holding out on the roof of the hotel with many other families when a chopper shows up only to open fire on them. Miraculously, Wilson's family (kids and all) are the only ones smart enough to survive not only a chopper crashing and exploding on top of them, but the rebels storming the roof even though his daughters are kicking and screaming for many crucial minutes.
* Brosnan and Kenny Rogers rescuing the family at the last minute. Why was Brosnan pointing to the roof as an escape when he never ended up there himself? How did he and Rogers find where the family was? Were they following them the whole time?
* The Ending. What a disaster... for one thing there is no Southeast Asian capital city with direct US flights and within a couple hours canoing distance from Vietnam. Even if there was, why would the river not be jam-packed with other refugees?
Despite this ridiculousness, the film offers some fascinating food for thought on what it would be like to happen to be a foreigner in a country as it falls apart. I'm sure it's happened to many people in such places as Libya, Cambodia, Liberia, Uganda, etc. The sheer level of fear, powerlessness, and awkwardness of such a scenario is successfully portrayed here, but unfortunately squandered by many points in which the filmmakers dumbed things down to focus on overdone and predictable, logic-defying clichés.
I have to point out that there's many points of undeniably well-handled tension including a wonderful scene in which the family has to sneak through a celebration parade. There's a lot of promise throughout the film actually and moments of real humanity that shine through, but this scene constitutes the last of it. Much of the action and violence that stir up in the last third of the film loses its impact due to an increasing reliance on shaky-cam cinematography as the film progresses. Someone really needs to end this nuisance of a filmmaking practice as it really is just sloppy and has killed almost every action film since 1998. It just takes me right out of the movie.
I'm glad I saw this movie but can't help but wonder how much greater it could have been had it been made a little more KILLING FIELDS and a little less WORLD WAR Z.
* Wilson barely manages to get back to his hotel room in time to warn his family but has to go back for his oldest daughter swimming in the downstairs pool, leaving his wife to hold down the hotel. Some rebels butcher the family across the way from her in a very effectively tense scene and she bars the door with her body. For some reason, the rebels just give up on breaking down the door? Okay, maybe they were tired... let's go on to the next one.
* Wilson's family is holding out on the roof of the hotel with many other families when a chopper shows up only to open fire on them. Miraculously, Wilson's family (kids and all) are the only ones smart enough to survive not only a chopper crashing and exploding on top of them, but the rebels storming the roof even though his daughters are kicking and screaming for many crucial minutes.
* Brosnan and Kenny Rogers rescuing the family at the last minute. Why was Brosnan pointing to the roof as an escape when he never ended up there himself? How did he and Rogers find where the family was? Were they following them the whole time?
* The Ending. What a disaster... for one thing there is no Southeast Asian capital city with direct US flights and within a couple hours canoing distance from Vietnam. Even if there was, why would the river not be jam-packed with other refugees?
Despite this ridiculousness, the film offers some fascinating food for thought on what it would be like to happen to be a foreigner in a country as it falls apart. I'm sure it's happened to many people in such places as Libya, Cambodia, Liberia, Uganda, etc. The sheer level of fear, powerlessness, and awkwardness of such a scenario is successfully portrayed here, but unfortunately squandered by many points in which the filmmakers dumbed things down to focus on overdone and predictable, logic-defying clichés.
I have to point out that there's many points of undeniably well-handled tension including a wonderful scene in which the family has to sneak through a celebration parade. There's a lot of promise throughout the film actually and moments of real humanity that shine through, but this scene constitutes the last of it. Much of the action and violence that stir up in the last third of the film loses its impact due to an increasing reliance on shaky-cam cinematography as the film progresses. Someone really needs to end this nuisance of a filmmaking practice as it really is just sloppy and has killed almost every action film since 1998. It just takes me right out of the movie.
I'm glad I saw this movie but can't help but wonder how much greater it could have been had it been made a little more KILLING FIELDS and a little less WORLD WAR Z.