No Escape - Intense Racism

[SecondPrize]

That's some mighty fine virtue signalling right here. Should anyone ask me how good a person you are, I'll be sure to mention how you bravely stood up and called these filmmakers racist.
You want racism on film, check out how the black guy is portrayed in Street Fighter (Sonny Chiba, not video game). That presentation of a character is built upon an idea that black people are inferior. The rioters in this film are rioters first and the actions they take are the actions of rioters, you're the one one bringing their race into it, not the actors, directors or producers.

 

[Shihoudani]

That's some mighty fine virtue signalling right here. Should anyone ask me how good a person you are, I'll be sure to mention how you bravely stood up and called these filmmakers racist.
You want racism on film, check out how the black guy is portrayed in Street Fighter (Sonny Chiba, not video game). That presentation of a character is built upon an idea that black people are inferior. The rioters in this film are rioters first and the actions they take are the actions of rioters, you're the one one bringing their race into it, not the actors, directors or producers.

You sir deserve an award. Political correctness has gotten to the point where if something exists, it has to be racist somehow. Micro aggression is the new fad, wait til you see reviews chastising films for committing micro aggression due to inherent racism or privilege.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

"Why doesn't it focus on the citizens of the country?"
This is like complaining that "The Raid" should have focused entirely on the innocent people in the apartment building and not on the Cops. Likewise, you could basically make this argument for just about any movie ever made that involves people in life or death situations. 'Die Hard' shouldn't have focused on John McClain, it should have focused on those poor people being held hostage! "Tears of the Sun" should have focused on the innocent people being killed, not on the Navy SEALs who can actually fight back! "Dredd" shouldn't have focused on the Judges, it should have focused on the people being held hostage in that building by the criminals!

Actually, there are a few scenes in both Dredd and the Raid that make a point of showing that not everyone in the building are criminals but rather the world they live in is overrun by them in certain areas. It never dwells on these matters since that would kill the pacing but those small asides do help make the world expand and give context. Of course it helps that the major villains in both movies are only a twirly mustache away from being Snidley Whiplash.


I mean if the setting is a coup, then there's a good chance that Owen Wilson's family would find themselves running for their lives alongside many of the locals since radical groups like that adore putting their own to the sword: I mean the Khmer Rouge are estimated to have killed up to 21% of Cambodia's population, never mind any foreign nationals unlucky enough to have been there at the time.

I haven't seen the film so I'll refrain from weighing in on if I think it's racist, but based on what both sides are saying I'd say it just suffers from tunnel vision and focuses on the family to detriment of both context and scale.

 

[Bat Vader]

I think the film makers wanted to use ISIS originally but because having muslims be terrorists is "racist" they used asian country No. 43 instead.

How is that racist though? Are there really people out there that think Muslim is a race? They honestly don't know it just means someone who follows the religion of Islam? I'm curious if people like that actually exist.

 

[sageoftruth]

I seem to be an exception to that filmmaking rule. For me, if you put children in a film, especially if the children are nothing but the load, I'll just be cheering for any outcome that leads to me not having to deal with them for the rest of the movie.

 

[sageoftruth]

Moviebob may have departed, but his spirit lives on.


"Why doesn't it focus on the citizens of the country?"
This is like complaining that "The Raid" should have focused entirely on the innocent people in the apartment building and not on the Cops. Likewise, you could basically make this argument for just about any movie ever made that involves people in life or death situations. 'Die Hard' shouldn't have focused on John McClain, it should have focused on those poor people being held hostage! "Tears of the Sun" should have focused on the innocent people being killed, not on the Navy SEALs who can actually fight back! "Dredd" shouldn't have focused on the Judges, it should have focused on the people being held hostage in that building by the criminals!

Also, there's the simple fact he missed that actual citizens are not fish out of water. A citizen knows how society works, and has friends to go to for help. A foreign tourist is running blind with the only advantage being that he has a safe home to escape to. This movie would be a lot less tense if it was about a citizen.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

My favourite thing about the internet is seeing someone say racism and watching the anti-pc crowd get triggered.

My favorite part is watching people declare basically everything under the sun as racist without putting an iota of critical thinking effort into it.

 

[hentropy]

I think the problem with the movie isn't any one specific thing you can pin it for, but rather a perfect storm of tropes and themes.

Set it in a nameless country? Check.
That nameless country is an amalgamation of many major Asian countries because people don't know anything about Cambodia? Check.
Don't even pretend that it's based on a true story? Check.
Americans shouldn't leave their suburbs or they'll die? Check.
Make all evil foreigners faceless with no characterization? Check.
Focus entirely on the suffering of the whites? Check.

Taken was still sorta crappy because of "Americans shouldn't leave their suburbs" trope, it doesn't matter that everyone in it was white. Argo was able to make their mobs mostly faceless because it was a real situation that took the time to fully inform the audience about what the conflict was about (although it did take some liberties with the truth that weren't really needed). In this case had just one of the tropes been employed it wouldn't have been much of a problem, but the fact that anyone (producer or whoever) looked at that script and thought there were no problems with it shows that 1) either they are fully out of touch or 2) are intentionally employing racist tropes for selfish purposes.

Taken was a damn good film, I don't see how the film was implying that americans should "never leave the suburbs" or that it was "making all foreigners faceless" or "focusing entirely on the suffering of the whites", also you're very naive if you actually believe that the scriptwriters were "implying racist tropes for selfish purposes".

I never said Taken hit all the points above, only No Escape did that. However, I still hear people citing Taken or some other movie as a proof that you "shouldn't go to Europe" and other BS, it may be idiots but there are a lot of those. Taken could have very easily been set in the US, and it would have been more realistic and believable for it. Kidnappers going to the most touristy part of Paris to kidnap two American nationals and then getting away with it (aside from Liam Neeson of course) is one of the most stupid and unbelievable movie plots I've encountered. Europe does have a problem with sex trafficking (as does the US), but it's not tourists being abducted, it's off-the-grid eastern Europeans being trafficked through western Europe to work in the sex trade. Paris is one of the safest cities for tourists to visit, likely much safer than any major American city.

Is it a good action movie? Sure, but its premise is so repulsive that it just stinks up the whole movie. And unlike No Escape, few people at the time it came out criticized it, because that's how deeply ingrained "Foreign = Bad" is in our collective psyche.

 

[Fox12]

This reminds me of an excellent, little known Spielberg film called Empire of the Sun, about an English family getting caught up in the Japanese invasion of China. It was an interesting look at poverty, chaos, internment camps, and how the Chinese and Japanese viewed the conflict. It had a white British kid as the protagonist, but it did a good job of humanizing all the groups involved. There was a particularly interesting scene where their house is being looted, and the kids maid slaps him in the face when he asks her for assistance. I would highly reccomend it, if you want to see this done right.

I thought Argo was interesting as well, since they at least try to explain the Iranian situation.

This is a disappointment, I was hoping this would be a thought provoking film.

 

[maninahat]

Ok guys, question time:

Why didn't Black Hawk Down get flamed like this movie is getting? Is it purely because it came out when political correctness was just starting to appear, or did it portray the blight of the horde of foreigners better than No Escape did?

From what I remember of Black Hawk Down, it did have some moments of humanization, but that made up 2% of them movie at the most; 80% was just American soldiers mowing down hordes of Somalis, which was the point of the movie, but that obviously doesn't justify anything.

That's an interesting question.

I would say there are several caveats that make it bite less:

1) Black Hawk Down is from the perspective of soldiers, who's primary interaction with the locals is going involve shooting them from a safe distance - that makes it easier to not show the Somalian's faces.
2) It is explicitly based on a true story, of which the most detailed accounts presumably come from US soldiers rather than the insurgents. Faithfulness to these accounts could partly justify the lack of Somalian characterization. No Escape, despite its obvious real life influences, is a fictional movie that doesn't have to stick to such a restricted accounts.

That said, I can easily see why people can be critical of Black Hawk Down, both in the movie and the real life debacle. The twenty or so Americans killed is depicted as a total tragedy, whereas the thousands of Somalians killed are a statistic at the end - a statistic which pro-military types might even be proud of, to show how deadly and courageous the Rangers were against such odds, as opposed to yet another atrocity in one of the most unstable and poorest countries in the world. A couple of Somalians get humanized in the movie...a couple...it is still an unbelievably one sided look at the conflict and a case of Hollywood treating white Americans as implicitly more valuable than other races and nations.

 

[Loonyyy]

Ok guys, question time:

Why didn't Black Hawk Down get flamed like this movie is getting? Is it purely because it came out when political correctness was just starting to appear, or did it portray the blight of the horde of foreigners better than No Escape did?

From what I remember of Black Hawk Down, it did have some moments of humanization, but that made up 2% of them movie at the most; 80% was just American soldiers mowing down hordes of Somalis, which was the point of the movie, but that obviously doesn't justify anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hawk_Down_(film)

Because it did.

It got slammed by the New York Times in the same manner. It got slammed by one of the actors. It got called out by Entertainment Weekly and the Philadelphia Weekly, it got called out by Somali nationals, it got called out by one of the faction leaders who appeared in the film, Somalians tend to think little of the Americans, and in viewings in Somalia, cheer when Americans are shot, a Navy Seal criticized the accuracy, Malaysian officials complained that the contribution of the Malaysian military was erased, as did a Pakistani general who later became the Pakistani President.

Notably, none of these people are enforcers of your vaunted "Political Correctness", nor SJWs. They're a mix of critics, world leaders, members and leaders of the military, and the foreign peoples themselves.

It's the most basic of research. It's in the wikipedia article. Before levelling this claim, do your due diligence.
EDIT:

snip

You are engaging with a fantasy, constructed from wholecloth. It's available in the most basic source, and if you search the net, you can see more results that didn't make publications of merit.

 

[Cowabungaa]

/

/

I love the discussion you are having. I think the biggest problem and the point you missing about the biggest problem of the movie can be summarized pretty much as....

......They just didn't care.

they could've built the motivation of the rebels but...

......They just didn't care.

they could've shown the lives of Native people suffering in those countries but...

......They just didn't care.

they could've built a realistic depiction and back story of the country but...

......They just didn't care.

What they cared about was making a dumb suspense movie for the average American bloke, with well-known actors(who a lot times are white) and shit it for mass appeal. Because doing what you guys or I mentioned above would take too much damn work for Hollywood blockbuster. I don't think they meant to be racist but they so did not give a shit that they accidentally made something uncomfortable.

so in short...

[HEADING=1]They just didn't care.[/HEADING]

That seems to be a pretty good summary I suppose. There's a difference between actively being racist and basically saying "All Asian people are on the brink of turning into inhuman savages" and just not caring.

Is that racist? Maybe a little, yes, in this day and age. We shouldn't forget context, and in this day and age we're fully aware of the problems regarding marginalized people. So to portray a relatively marginalized group versus the people 'in charge' in the way this movie seems to be doing is at least very tasteless. There's a lot more nuance to people, to do that to any bad guy in a movie would be bad film making. But when you put that in the context of a society in which racism, both active and institutionalized, exists a different picture gets painted.

So I'd say it's not as much actively racist but that it to a degree continues a kind of institutionalize racism within movie culture. And that's pretty bad.

Bottom line is that there's a lot of degrees between racist and not racist. The discussions regarding these topics are a lot more nuanced than most conversations on the internet make it seem to be. And they should be, because if you lose nuance, you lose important information.

If anyone is interested in seeing this sort of story worked out a lot better; watch the TV-show Tyrant. It's not perfect but it shows a lot more sides to this kind of situation.

 

[LetalisK]

Your response would probably be something like, "Well yes, but you should be more specific about where this is. America is a big place."

And then Oregon gets rip shit pissed because the studio made up a fictional coup movie that makes them look bad. It's easier for filmmakers to just not point at anybody and make it about a place they never explicitly state the name of so that the studios don't alienate any countries they may want to market to/shoot films at in the future. They're scared. But that worm is starting to turn.

I mean, clearly India had a revolution like this. Except for, you know, that one time it didn't. Because Gandhi.

I would be interested in a movie about the Partition of India in the Punjab area and the hundreds of thousands, potentially a million by high estimates, of people that died from the violence and riots. I miss Gandhi.