SPOILER ALERT: the following article contains massive spoilers, including the ending. If you have not yet seen the movie, proceed at your own risk, or better, come back to this article later!
American businessman Jack Dwyer (Owen Wilson), wife Annie and their two young daughters arrive in Southeast Asia to begin a new life. As his company plans to improve the region’s water quality, the family quickly learns that they’re right in the middle of a political uprising. Armed rebels attack the hotel where they’re staying, ordered to kill any foreigners that they encounter. Amid utter chaos, Jack must find a way to save himself and his loved ones from the violence erupting all around them.
SPOILERS AHEAD
No Escape Ran Plot Summary and Synopsis
In an unidentified country in Southeast Asia, a Prime Minister closes a deal with a representative of Cardiff, an American company specializing in water systems. After the representative leaves, a group of armed rebels initiate a coup d’état and assassinate the Prime Minister.
Seventeen hours earlier, Jack Dwyer (Owen Wilson), a new Cardiff employee, is flying to the country with his wife Annie (Lake Bell) and their daughters Lucy (Sterling Jerins) and Briegel “Beeze” Dwyer (Claire Geare).
After landing, they run into a Briton named Hammond (Pierce Brosnan) who offers them a ride with him and his friend “Kenny Rogers” (Sahajak Boonthanakit), to the Imperial Lotus Hotel, where many foreigners are staying. At the hotel, Jack learns that most of the phone lines, television, and internet are down all over the city.
The next morning, Jack goes out to buy a newspaper, and inadvertently finds himself in the middle of a confrontation between armed protesters and riot police with riot shields. The two forces clash violently as Jack makes his escape.
Eventually, the protesters gain the upper hand and begin killing the police. Jack runs back to the hotel and witnesses the rebels executing an American Cardiff employee out front. A rebel soldier spots Jack, forcing him to quickly climb up a fire escape and enter the hotel through a window. The rebels break through the main hotel entrance, and begin indiscriminately slaughtering the staff and guests.
Jack makes it back to his family’s room, but learns that Lucy is swimming in the pool downstairs. Jack barely gets to Lucy in time before rebels pour onto the pool area, while Annie narrowly manages to keep them out of their hotel room.
As Jack returns with Lucy, he encounters a rebel in the stairwell, but Hammond saves him and tells him to get to the roof. Jack’s family arrives to the roof and join some of the hotel’s guests and staff, who have gathered and blocked the door. Jack sees that hundreds of rebels are gathering at the base of the hotel, and that they have seized most of the city.
A French hotel guest interprets what they are chanting: “Don’t resist. There will be no prisoners, because [they’re] going to kill [us] anyway”… “Blood for water!” Upon questioning an injured hotel bellhop, they learn that the rebels are protesting the foreign corporations’ (like Cardiff) control of their water supply.
An approaching helicopter is then heard, but everyone’s relief turns to horror as they realize it belongs to the rebels, who open fire on the people below. As Jack’s family runs for cover, the helicopter becomes entangled in electrical wires and crashes.
Another band of rebels breaks through the blocked door and kills most of the survivors as Jack and his family jump onto an office rooftop next to the hotel. Jack looks back and sees the rebels executing the remaining hotel guests and staff before holding up the “Welcome” banner from Cardiff with his photo on it, realizing he’s a high-value target.
After climbing to a ledge of the office building they jumped onto, a tank targets their building and fires into it indiscriminately, killing many people inside. Jack’s family hides under some debris and bodies as the rebels swarm the building on a killing spree.
The family remains there until nightfall, with a corpse hiding them. As Jack leaves their hiding place, he’s spotted by a looting rebel whom Jack then kills, much to his own and Annie’s horror. They find a map, take clothes from the dead office workers to disguise themselves as locals, and make their way to the American embassy on a stolen moped.
On the way, they manage to ride through a crowd of rebel demonstrators; one man notices they are foreigners, but says nothing, after having seen the two young children riding with them. Upon arriving at the embassy, they find it overrun and deserted and several Marine Security Guards dead, and are forced to flee as the embassy explodes, but not before being seen by a group of rebels exiting.
The family takes shelter in a Buddhist shrine garden nearby, and are protected by its Caretaker. The rebels enter the compound and start searching for them.
Jack attempts to steal a gun and Annie comes out from hiding in order to draw attention away from him, while Lucy and Beeze hide. Jack grabs the gun, only to find that it’s unloaded. He’s then beaten and restrained. As the group’s leader, Samnang, is about to rape Annie, Hammond and Kenny arrive and shoot most of the rebels, though Samnang escapes. The two men take the family to the roof of a nearby brothel.
As they eat, Hammond explains that he and Kenny work for the British government. He and other agents talked the former government into making deals with companies like Cardiff. As these deals allowed the companies to “own” the government through debt, they angered the people, which led to the uprising. Hammond explains that their plan is to get to the nearby river, and sailing across the border into Vietnam, where they hope to receive asylum.
As their children sleep, Annie and Jack tearfully tell each other that they have no regrets on their life together, preparing themselves for the fact that they could likely die the next morning. Before they can enact their plan, the group is attacked by rebels from an overlooked guard tower, who unfortunately kill Kenny and severely wound Hammond.
Hammond sacrifices himself to disable a rebel truck following them. Near the riverbank, Annie and the kids hide as Jack finds a fisherman and trades his watch and shoes for a boat. However, Samnang who escaped earlier comes back with another group, captures Jack, and prepares to execute him. Lucy leaves her hiding place, distracting Samnang, whose shot hits Jack’s shoulder.
Samnang catches Lucy, puts a gun in her hands and another to her head, ordering her to kill Jack. She refuses, but Jack encourages her to shoot him (in hopes to potentially save herself). Before Lucy can make a choice, Annie intervenes and bludgeons Samnang to death with an oar, while Jack grabs the man’s gun and kills the remaining rebels.
The family boards a boat and paddles downriver toward the Vietnamese border. They are spotted by a group of rebels, but keep paddling. Although the Vietnamese border patrol “warns” the family not to enter Vietnam, they take no action to actually stop them, and just as soon as the boat crosses the border marker, the border patrol turn their guns on the onlookers.
Warning rebels against attacking the family as they are now in Vietnamese waters and if the rebels shoot, they will consider it an act of war. As the family is retrieved by the border guards, they embrace each other, having finally survived their ordeal.
No Escape Ending
Later, in a hospital, Jack and Annie narrate to the kids the story of how Lucy was born, a story the two daughters had asked to hear throughout the movie.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).