Your Syrian Vacation Inescapable (2012) Directed by Ruba Nadda By Christina Harlin, your Fearless Young Orphan I wasn’t a fan of Liam Neeson’s silly film Taken, sorry everybody. But here is a film that I think fares much better with roughly the same plot. What is the difference? The father who goes seeking his abducted daughter isn’t a sadistic asshole, for one thing. Alexander Siddig (in a fascinatingly subtle-but-badassed performance) stars as Adib, a dignified computer tech manager at a Toronto bank. He has a wife and two young adult daughters. His family knows that he once lived in Syria but nothing else about him. His curious elder daughter, photographer Muna, is on assignment in Greece and decides to take a side trip to Syria just to see where her father is from. Syria is not really a place to show up with a camera, asking questions, particularly not when your father is a man who disappeared from the country 20 years before under an accusation of treason (oops, Dad forgot to mention that tidbit at storytime). Muna vanishes. Word gets back to Adib – no ransom note or anything, just the knowledge that his daughter was in Syria and that now, she seems to be missing. The hotel still has her luggage and her passport. The young woman seems to have simply vanished off the face of the Earth. He decides to go and get her. A fugitive like Adib is going to need some help to get into a country that has, according to one character, fifteen different secret police forces. He engages that help through Fatima (Marisa Tomei), who was long ago Adib’s fiancée. The pair of them, along with their friend Sayid, engaged in a bit of civil unrest, but when the blame came down, it was Adib who took the blame and went on the run. Fatima married a general and is living in relative privilege, and Sayid joined up with one of the fifteen secret police agencies. He’s a commander now, and not above turning his old friend in if it might get him a promotion. Fatima agrees to help Adib because she loved him once, and is only very slightly (haha, no actually, extremely) pissed off that Adib left her, never sent for her, never even let her know if he was alive or dead, and now shows up wanting her help to retrieve the daughter he had with another woman. Adib also gets help, and a bit more information than he bargained for, from the Canadian embassy representative Paul (always-cool Joshua Jackson) who has a connection with the missing Muna. So as you can see, Adib’s return to Syria is just about as big a mess as one might expect. And here we have our elegant, almost slight-of-build computer technician, middle-aged, in his nice suits and ties, with his polite demeanor and effortless calm. He hardly looks like a man to be reckoned with, but sometimes it’s the quiet ones that surprise you. When it is necessary, Adib explodes into calculated and effective violence which he employs like a tool – neither loving it or hating it, but knowing it is a necessary thing. Why include this with spy movies? Adib was accused of spying and it seems that, even if that accusation were not true, there was plenty more he was guilty of. He has unexpected connections with the Russian embassy. He seems to know an Days are surprisingly rough in the IT Department. awful lot of people. He knows what to look for in a room. And you’ll want to watch out, if you think you have the upper hand, for this man can put you flat on the floor. He’s a more impressive hero to a thinking viewer than would be the thuggish Hollywood sorts, all threats and posturing. But don’t think that I’m just snuggling up to Inescapable because it was a better version of a story I’d already seen. It is actually quite a tense espionage film, if only because we want so much for this guy to retrieve his daughter safely (caring for the characters makes or breaks a movie to this Movie Orphan). There is more to recommend it, though. The acting is quite good, from a varied and respectable cast. The “villains” are not cannon fodder in front of a mastermind, but organized people making a living in a very dangerous place and employing the methods that work for survival, just the same as Adib. The characters we meet have flaws and virtues and real motives behind their actions. Even the deceitful Sayid, at whose feet much blame can be laid, is no cookie-cutter villain but a man who fell to envy, of all things, and regrets doing so even as he might continue on that very path. Marisa Tomei keeps a good hold on her part – lovestruck, furious, heartbroken Fatima, who could have become an obvious caricature of the woman-scorned and instead reacts with great dignity to all that is thrown her way. Holding it all together is Adib, a concerned father, who has a lot to answer for but who won’t answer anything until he gets his daughter safely home again. Opinions on this film seem to be varied, but it certainly captured my interest and held it. It is quite possible that its lack of Americans makes it less likely to trigger interfering emotions: this is about Canadian citizens and Syrian officials and the streets of Damascus, which in my opinion sidesteps a great many landmines in favor of a simpler story. As an exciting journey into cultures I knew little about, I found the film to be suspenseful and exciting, a sleeper that should get the attention of fans who love foreign intrigue. .