Owen Wilson gets serious in No Escape
He’s gunning for action-hero status, and Pierce Brosnan’s there to help
Here’s what’s on the radar screen in TV, music and film for the coming week.
MOVIES
Big release on Aug. 26: No Escape Big picture: It’s like a flip-the-script Star Wars set in Southeast Asia instead of space: Owen Wilson’s family is an “empire” of three, and the rebels have decisively chosen the Dark Side of the Force. Wilson plays a U.S. businessman settling his family in a new country just as it suddenly descends into a deadly civil war. Finally, a film with a realistic enemy: no robots, cyborgs or dinosaurs in sight. Not even an act of God like an earthquake, asteroid or volcano. In No Escape, Wilson’s family faces humanity at its worst: a bloodthirsty rebel army. The success of this film depends on whether the audience can take Wilson — known for his comedies — seriously. Wilson’s squinty, vacant eyes and nasal drawl are a tougher sell when he’s gunning for action-hero status. Luckily old pro Pierce Brosnan is on hand to lend Wilson guidance. As a scruffy, unkempt expat, Brosnan looks like he went to Jeff Bridges Boot Camp before the shoot (I would pay good money to attend such a camp, if it should ever exist). When Brosnan says, “You’re going to love it here,” at the film’s outset, it’s just like in horror movies when a real estate agent sells a young family a haunted house. Forecast: No Escape is the perfect late-summer escape from the federal election. No advertising, door-knocking or robocalls can penetrate your local theatre. But please don’t see this before travelling overseas or if anyone in your family recently took an exotic new post. Then it’s probably best to just see Jurassic World again.
TV/ONLINE
Big event: Narcos (Netflix, Aug. 28) Big picture: Narcos is Blow meets Scarface meets The Godfather. It tells the parallel tales of Steve Murphy (Boyd Holdbrook), a drug-enforcement agent in Miami who goes from busting grass-fed hippies in the ’70s to gun-fighting armed drug cartels in the ’80s. The main man behind the change of pace: Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar (Wagner Moura), known as the King of Cocaine. At its height, his criminal organization made $5 billion a year: As the show’s tagline says, “There’s no business like blow business.” But there are deadly, tragic consequences. An all-out drug war ensues, with executions, assassinations, car bombs, missiles, political fights, gunfights, fist fights and knife fights — basically everything but staring contests (which would have been epic, what with all the cocaine). Forecast: Truth is more epic than fiction. Escobar’s dramatic rise and fall would have been the envy of Shakespeare himself. This gritty, well-crafted drama adds some summer heat to the small screen.
MUSIC
Big releases on Aug. 28: The Weeknd (Beauty Behind the Madness); Destroyer (Poison Season) Big picture: It’s a second summer dose of Canada Day with two can’t-miss homegrown releases. You can already blame The Weeknd for lodging the song Can’t Feel My Face (the perfect title song for Narcs). Well, there’s more music where that ode to getting high came from. Toronto R&B wunderkind Abel Tesfaye releases his second proper studio album under his stage name. For a career that started with songs posted to YouTube, Tesfaye is doing OK for himself. Vancouver’s Dan Bejar (Destroyer) is an antidote to musical mediocrity. He’s an indie rock darling for a reason: boundless talent. But you may need an English PhD and illicit substances to make sense of his idiosyncratic lyrics. Forecast: The Weeknd is positioned for takeoff this week with the TV debut of his catchy summer hit at the MTV VMAs. At this point, only a Miley twerk could interfere with Tesfaye’s upward career trajectory — as Robin Thicke knows all too well. (The Blurred Lines model has her own movie, while Thicke’s future is just blurry.)