INESCAPABLE: Anatomy of a DIY Blockbuster

Toronto’s Globe and Mail took a closer look at the challenges filmmaker’s faced in making Inescapable, and how they overcame them. They break down the elements of the film into The Star (Marisa Tomei), The Leading Man (Alexander Siddig), and The Juicy Character Part (Joshua Jackson). Here’s the excerpt discussing Sid:

Alexander Siddig, hazel-eyed and ludicrously handsome, wears a suit jacket well and speaks in a British accent so seductive that it releases endorphins in my body. He’s full of gracious yet mischievous praise for Nadda and the “twisted, aborted, Munch-ian affair” that she wrote. “Ruba’s a romantic, but she’s brutally unsentimental,” he says. “She doesn’t indulge in the kiss, the [sex scene], the things men generally can’t help themselves but include. She’s really in charge of her material, but she doesn’t give that impression, which I adore. Because she’s a kind of snake.” His eyes twinkle. “You have no idea how smart she is until she’s on you.”

Siddig is aware that Inescapable will be compared to more propulsive entertainments such as Frantic, Taken and his own Syriana. That’s one of the reasons he agreed to do it. “I had a responsibility to men,” he says. “Men are often horribly misrepresented on film. We’re not as capable as movie characters, and that emasculates us. Those butch men are as untrue as skinny models are to most women.”

So he convinced Nadda to let him lose his fistfight in the film, and is proud that, though Adib knows how to use a gun, he would rather not.

“I needed to not betray the man, the father,” he says, “because when kids dream of what their fathers should be like, it should be someone in the ballpark of a real human being. It’s not a moral trip. I just can’t compete with Liam Neeson or Harrison Ford.” (I beg to differ.)

(Read the rest of the analysis here…)