Movie Review: Escape Room

Escape Room (2019) 

Directed by Adam Robitel 

Written by Bragi F. Schut, Maria Melnik 

Starring Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Tyler Labine, 

Release Date January 4th, 2019 

Published January 4th, 2019 

The first new release film of any year is often not very good in my experience. I have been writing about movies on the internet for nearly 20 years, dating back to having that Microsoft’s now rather ludicrous Web TV. Eventually, I came to dread the start of the year at the movies. Sure, there were Oscar movies that arrived late but the new-new movies of the year, especially the first new release of any year tended to be awful year after year. 

That trend was only recently bucked just last year when director Adam Robitel delivered the terrific final chapter of the Insidious franchise, Insidious The Last Key. I really enjoyed Insidious The Last Key and while the rest of January lived up to the reputation that month has earned as a dumping ground for studios looking to bury their trash while we were dazzled by the Award winner, at least the first new release of the year was entertaining. 

What luck then to find that director Adam Robitel was leading off the year again, this time with a new horror effort called Escape Room. Sure, I was worried when the film appeared to have not been shown to critics but then, at the last minute, reviews started showing up and they weren’t all bad. And, indeed, much like Insidious The Last Key was pretty good this time last year, Escape Room is pretty good kicking off this year. 

Escape Room stars Taylor Russell as Zoey, a shy and mousey college student who receives a strange package. Inside is a puzzle box and inside that puzzle box is an invitation to a fully immersive gaming experience called an Escape Room. For the unaware, Escape Rooms are a real deal experience. The concept has you locked inside a room with a time limit to discover all of the clues and free yourself from the room. 

We also meet two other characters in the run-up to arriving at the Escape Room of the title. Jason (Jay Ellis) is a high powered stock broker who receives a gift from one of his clients. Inside is the same kind of puzzle box sent to Zoey. He and Zoey do not know each other but they will meet at the Escape Room along with Ben (Logan Miller), a supermarket employee who gets a puzzle box from his employer. 

Once at the Escape Room we meet three more characters, Amanda (Debra Ann Woll, from Netflix’s Daredevil) an Iraq war veteran, Mike (Tyler Labine) a truck driver, and Danny (Nk Dodani) who is an Escape Room obsessive. It’s Danny who figures out that the waiting room where they first meet is actually the first of several Escape Rooms they will experience. He’s also the last to accept that these are more than Escape Rooms, they are genuine death traps that they must solve in order to survive. 

What Escape Room does so much better than most recent horror films is give us characters that we genuinely care about. Each of these six characters are genuinely good people with character flaws and a deep and abiding compassion. Jason is set up as the sort of villain of the group, the one who appears to put his own survival ahead of everyone else’s but even he appears to be a good person who gets pushed to an extreme and reacts somewhat poorly. 

There is not one of these characters that I hated so much I hoped they wouldn’t survive. The worst trend in horror of this young century was the move to make villains the center of horror movies and make their victims so hateful, obnoxious and self-involved that we didn’t mind so much when they were hacked up. Escape Room goes the complete opposite direction and creates six characters that we invest in and care about. 

Yes, they are character types, recognizable for some stock characteristics, but they had a genuine quality and compassion for one another that is incredibly refreshing from a genre that revels in the survival of the fittest archetype and views compassion as weakness. I came to adore each of these characters to the point that when one of them sacrifices themselves to save the others I was honestly moved and sad that the character was gone. 

Escape Room does have its issues. The film does feel like assembled pieces from other horror movies such as Hostel and Saw but minus that nastiness. Don’t get me wrong, I truly enjoy the Saw franchise, but even that series tended to fall back on nasty characters rather than good ones. Hostel meanwhile, was wall to wall vile people to the point that I wanted to nuke the entire movie and the sick minded writer-director who assembled it. 

If the character from Escape Room were in a Saw movie, they’d all survive because these characters immediately embrace the ethos of working together and trusting each other's strengths and making up for each other's weaknesses. This is especially true of Taylor Russell’s Zoey who is a tremendously resourceful and compelling protagonist. She is so sweet that you assume she’s weak but Russell invests her with a rigorous intelligence. 

I am really happy to say that I kind of loved Escape Room. I did wish it had only ended once, the two sequel teases did push the wrong buttons for the potential franchise of Escape Room movies but as long as Adam Robitel is at the helm along with the witty and smart writing team of Bragi F Schut and Maria Melnik, nailing their first Hollywood script, I am on board for even more Escape Room fun.

Movie Review: Flyboys

Flyboys (2006) 

Directed by Tony Bill 

Written by David S. Ward 

Starring James Franco, Martin Henderson, Jean Reno, Jennifer Decker, Tyler Labine

Release Date September 22nd, 2006 

Published September 23rd, 2006 

The story of the Lafayette Escadrille was a passion project for producer Dean Devlin. But, even the man whose resume includes Independence Day and The Patriot could not get a major studio interested in spending the money necessary to make a movie about American pilots who fought for the French in World War 1. Enter David Ellison; the scion of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who had a few million dollars burning a hole in his pocket and a love of flying.

Together with director Tony Bill, Devlin and Ellison raised 60 million dollars, mostly their own money, and made Flyboys. The investment was not a great one. There is a reason studios did not commit to this picture and it involves a script that is lightweight, a romance that is far from grand and a lack of the star power necessary to make Flyboys a sell to mass audiences.

On the bright side, the flying scenes turned out really cool.

With Europe in chaos and Germany preparing to take the whole of France a call went out for pilots to join the French army in fighting back. It was 1916, more than a year before the United States officially declared war on the Austro-Hungarian alliance, and though their country was not part of the war, a few American boys were offered the chance to go to France and become fighter pilots.

Known as the Lafayette Esquadrille; these American flyboys arrived with all of the cock and swagger of your typical American and found a war lilke none had ever seen before. In the film Flyboys, a fictional depiction of the Lafayette squadron, James Franco takes the lead role of Blaine Rawlings a texan on the run from debts that have taken his family ranch.

After seeing a newsreel advertising the chance to become a pilot and fight the Germans, Rawlings jumped aboard a steam ship to France, just ahead of the cops on his tail. Arriving in the outskirts of France, far from the glamour of Paris, Rawlings is joined by several fresh faced americans with similar hopes of becoming pilots and of escaping difficult pasts.

There is Beagle (David Ellison) a cocky but secretive wannabe pilot whose past is even more complicated than Rawlings'. Briggs (Tyler Labine) would seem to have the easiest life as a son of privilege however, it was his pushy and unrelenting father (Timothy Pigott Smith) who pushed him to this fight against his will. Eugene Skinner (Abdul Salis) was a successful boxer in France who left America in hopes of finding a society more accepting of African Americans, now he hopes becoming a pilot can find him acceptance back home.

There is, of course, the obligaory romantic subplot and this is where Flyboys crashes into cliche. The romance between James Franco's Rawlings and a girl from the French countryside played by Jennifer Decker is truly insipid, beginning with a meet cute where Rawlings mistakes Decker's Lucienne for a prostitute. What follows is a dull, passionless courtship, further complicated by the couple's inability to speak each others language.

The language barrier reminded me of the terrifically funny movie Better Off Dead in which the mother of the nerdy kid who took in the beautiful french exchange student told everyone that her son and her guest spoke 'the international language'. If Franco and Decker's characters in Flyboys were speaking 'the international language' they were not communicating it very well, the romance is just awful; worse yet it's an anchor that drags out the films runtime, achingly over two hours, and keeps the film out of the skies.

When Flyboys is in the air, indulging the action that inspired it, the film often soars. The dogfights with German pilots in cool looking tri-planes, greatly augmented with CGI but often making use of real period aircrafts, are well shot, compelling, even exciting at times. Director Tony Bill, best known for the Emmy nominated TV movie Harlan County War, does a spectacular job combining digital effects with real period aircrafts and delivers some really exciting moments. If only he had had the guts to cut the romance and stick to the action, we would be talking about a much better, and thankfully; much shorter film.

So many directors, studios, and producers have tried to turn James Franco into a star that it is starting to become a sad joke. With his James Dean eyes, pout and brood; Franco has the tools for teen idol-dom but seems to lack either the will or the talent to make the move to real stardom. I enjoyed Franco's performance in the period romance Tristan & Isolde earlier this year but his dour brooding persona, the one he has carried from his supporting roles in Spider-Man to 2005's The Great Raid and the abysmal boxing picture Annapolis, is getting really tired. Someone find this guy a lighthearted romantic comedy before his face freezes in that sad puppy pout.

The most interesting member of the cast is one the films financiers, or atleast a financiers son. David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison the owner of Oracle who sunk a good chunk into the making of Flyboys, plays Eddie Beagle the jovial but secretive member of the squad who is suspected of spying because he just can't seem to hit anything during fire fights.

Now, before you say nepotism landed David this role keep in mind; this is not his first acting gig. He played student number 1 in the indie flick Chumscrubber and produced, directed and starred in his own indie short called When All Else Fails , unseen and thus unjudged by me. Ellison brings some lovable charm to his role in Flyboys and the fact that he is, in reality, a trained pilot doesn't hurt either.

The supporting cast might actually have made better leads. Jean Reno does as well as he possibly can with the limited role as the French captain in charge of training the Flyboys. Martin Henderson, another actor Hollywood seems intent on turning into a star based on cheekbones alone, registers better than Franco in the role of the cocky veteran flyer who you just know will clash with the equally cocky Franco character before coming to respect him and maybe even fly with him as his wingman.

Poor Jennifer Decker. This lovely young French actress is made to look quite the fool in Flyboys. The scenes of Decker and Franco attempting to communicate but not understanding each other make her look as if she is mentally challenged. And while she is nice looking, the film needs her to be the kind of beauty that a man would be willing to give his life for; a face that would launch a thousand dogfights if you don't mind the illiteration.

Sadly Decker is not quite as attractive as the film wants you to believe. She needs to be supermodel gorgeous because the time that the couple spends together does not establish the kind of emotional or intellectual bonds needed for the kind of commitment that is asked for here. Young lust is really the only thing that could drive this relationship and Decker is not the type to inspire a lust one might give his life for.

When it's flying Flyboys is a pretty good action picture. On the ground however, Flyboys is awash in cliches, predictibility and a couple of truly dreadful performances. James Franco has the looks of a matinee idol but he had better find himself a role that consists of more than just brooding and dimples if he really wants to become a star.

Director Tony Bill aquits himself well as an action director but he needed more discipline and nerve in the editing room. Had he the guts to gut the romance and focus on the Flyboys we would be talking about an entirely different and far more entertaining picture.