Escape Blu-ray Review
Great or merely passable?
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, May 8, 2013
Zooming up into the Top 5 of my personal list of favorite filmmaker names, I present: Roar Uthaug. Uthaug became
something of an overnight sensation in 2006 when his horror film
Cold Prey became a huge success in his native Norway and then went on
to enjoy considerable worldwide acclaim (note that the Blu-ray link includes a sequel that Uthaug did not direct).
Uthaug was already on the radar of the international film community due to one of his college films gaining recognition
by the Academy Awards for their student fêtes, and Uthaug seems poised to become one of the few Norwegian
filmmakers to stake a claim in the worldwide cinematic community, and perhaps even in the highly exclusionary and
hoity toity environment of Hollywood. Uthaug's latest effort
Escape (which bears the original Norwegian title of
Flukt, something I simply couldn't help laughing at, juvenile that I am) is a visceral outing that isn't as fully
developed as
Cold Prey, but which offers much the same level of well crafted filmmaking, along with some
interesting performances, including by lead Ingrid Boisø Berdal, who also starred in
Cold Prey and has begun to
matriculate to American films in such outings as
Chernobyl Diaries and
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. The story of
Escape is rather
simple, something that gives the film a basic power and momentum but which also deprives it of much sense of
connection. In mid-14th century Norway, the country is still recovering from the devastating effects of The Black Plague.
A family of four is seen trekking across the anachronistically beautiful Norwegian landscape when they are attacked by
a gang of marauding toughs led by a warrior goddess named Dagmar (Ingrid Boisø Berdal), The father, mother and
young boy are ruthlessly killed, but the gang takes the adolescent girl, Signe (Isabel Christine Andreasen), and it soon
becomes apparent that Dagmar has some unseemly plans for the frightened prisoner.
Escape actually plays its card fairly close to its tufted leather vest in the early going, for as Signe watches in
horror
from the tarp covered confines of her parents' wagon as her parents are killed, we only see glimpses of what appears
to
be a gang of males. Signe turns to her little brother and assures him she will protect him, and the two
seem to
be
getting away with hiding—at least for a moment, until the little boys slips and gives away their location. Signe screams
to
him to run while several of the men hold her against the side of the wagon. At that point a hooded figure steps
forward
and uses a crossbow to bring down the little boy. When this figure pushes the hood back, we're still not
quite
sure whether or not this is a female we're looking at, for the face is hard, resolute and not "beautiful" in any traditional
sense. A few moments, later, though, we're fully aware that the leader of this gang is a
very violent woman
named Dagmar.
Once Signe is spirited away by the gang as they make their way back toward Dagmar's camp, things get even more
disturbing. A young girl named Frigg (Mina Olin)
seems to be Dagmar's daughter, and yet the tyke also seems
not to be taking her "mother"'s advice to treat Signe as a caged animal as seriously as she should. Dagmar lets Signe
know that Frigg has always wanted a
little sister, and that Dagmar can no longer have children, so Signe will be
utilized for that purpose, with several willing males in Dagmar's brigade more than happy to provide their "services" to
the project. Later, at the
campsite, when Signe is tied to a tree, Frigg comes out of a tent and seems to be making an attempt to actually get to
know the captive, until Dagmar intervenes. Dagmar informs Frigg that Frigg will need to cut off one of Signe's fingers by
sunrise the next day, both to teach Signe a lesson in subservience as well as to ensure Frigg's complicity in the pecking
order. Frigg
does approach Signe with a knife the next morning, but she actually cuts through the girl's tethers
and the two children set off on a mad dash in an attempt to escape.
It probably goes without saying that Signe figures out that Frigg is
not Dagmar's biological child, and in a later
scene once the girls have successfully evaded Dagmar and her troops and have found temporary shelter with a
protective male, the man reveals what he knows of Dagmar's past. This is an obvious attempt by scenarist Thomas
Moldestad to humanize the supposed villainess of the piece, and while it succeeds a little toward that end, it also points
out one of the major stumbling blocks of
Escape: we're simply thrown into this story so willy-nilly that there's
next to no connection with
any of the characters. Sure, Signe is a plucky young girl out to save herself and help
the obviously disoriented Frigg, but there's no real emotional pull to her story. Similarly, Dagmar just comes off as a
lunatic Amazon (or whatever the Norwegian equivalent of that tribe might be) on a mission to kill Signe and take back
Frigg. Uthaug is so intent on crafting a breathless film that he eschews any proper character development, something
that really would have helped create more of a bond between the audience and the characters.
Escape may not completely gel, but it's a good sight better than might be expected. The three main
performances are all quite excellent, especially the two young actors who have to carry much of the film on their slight
shoulders. But Berdal is also quite commanding in her role, with a quasi-masculine physicality that finally crumbles into
some touching, if kind of scary, vulnerability at the film's climax.
Escape is also implausibly scenic, given its kind
of turgid melodramatic elements. Uthaug does a good job of utilizing some evocative Norwegian landscapes in both
location and very artfully done matte and blue screen work. In fact the gorgeousness of the backgrounds makes for an
almost intentionally ironic counterpart to the ugliness that Signe and Frigg have to experience.
