Director: Ruba Nadda
MPAA Rating: NR
Film Pulse Score: 2/10
Female director Ruba Nadda has made several short film and feature-length movies. Although she has been making films since the late 1990s, Inescapable came across as if made by a director not in full control of the medium. Her screenplay does not help matters as it lacks credibility, originality, and tries too hard to be both a character-driven drama and action-adventure film rolled into one; there is no problem with this latter approach but it must be done well and Inescapable fails. I generally talk about concept and execution; many movies are conceptually strong but not well executed and vice versa. Here, Nadda’s screenplay fails on both counts.
Inescapable tells the story of Adib (Alexander Siddig) who lives in Toronto with his wife and two daughters. Within minutes of the film’s opening, Adib finds out that his eldest daughter, Muna, has been missing in Syria for several days. Adib is surprised as Muna was visiting Greece for her job as a professional photographer and he believed she was coming from there back to Toronto. The film’s setting is contemporary, so Syria would be sadly dangerous for anyone – its own citizens and foreigners alike. His daughters know he was born in Syria and left the country 30 years prior; Adib’s youngest daughter informs her father that Muna stopped there to see his homeland since he never speaks of it.
The rest follows along in incredibly predictable fashion. Adib digs through a storage box in his office and gets out a secretive case which includes his Syrian identification noting him as a member of the government’s version of our Central Intelligence Agency. He uses the cell phone to call someone in Syria and asks for help in getting into the country. We immediately understand that he left Syria under dire circumstances which, as the film unfolds, become quite clear; he left for good reason indeed as he was suspected of being a spy for Israel. Of course, he must return now to find his daughter himself as there is almost no one he can trust anymore.
His friend is Fatima (Marissa Tomei) who helps him enter the country undetected by authorities. He visits the Canadian consulate and informs a top aide there, Paul (Joshua Jackson), that his daughter is missing and he is there to find her. Paul wants to involve the Syrian government, but Adib – for the aforementioned reason – says Paul must not do so, although he cannot share with Paul why. The majority of the film follows Adib on his quest to locate Muna. In addition to Fatima, he asks for assistance from a top Syrian official, Sayid (Oded Fehr), with whom he previously had a strong working relationship and friendship. Adib finds himself hunted during his investigation by the antagonist, Halim (Saad Siddiqui), and his henchmen.
Conceptually, the only thing that might have saved the film was the fact that it is set in contemporary Syria. But Nadda pays little to no attention to that and basically the protagonist could have been put into any country for which he had been accused of spying. She was apparently taken because of photographs she took, although that is more-or-less a red herring or as Hitchcock would call it, a “mcguffin” – something that seems important but is a mere plot device to hook the audience but has no real value beyond that. The execution is worse than the concept. Nothing is credible. No character’s actions make much sense, and nearly every moment is absurdist and does not do anything more than give us about 75 minutes of chase scenes, political-intrigue meetings, and other run-of-the-mill save-my-kidnapped-daughter moments. The ending, which I will not spoil, can be seen from miles away and is unfulfilling largely because everything leading up to it has been equally unrewarding.
The performances are staid and did not draw me in even for a moment. Siddig is fine, but for someone who has not been an intelligence officer for 30 years, he is surprisingly in great shape and performs in top form. Tomei’s small role is pretty unnecessary, and her Syrian accent is distractingly poor. Jackson provides an interesting wrinkle to the plot, but he is underused and his performance is not particularly powerful. Sadly, there is not much here to recommend, and there are plenty of other movies with this concept that are much better. Look into those instead and escape from watching Inescapable.
