The Escape Artist

Directed by noted cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, The Escape Artist follows a young boy (Griffin O’Neal’s Danny Masters) as he leaves home to become an assistant to his aunt and uncle in their low-rent magic show – with complications ensuing as Danny finds himself caught up in the illicit activities of the mayor’s sleazy son (Raul Julia’s Stu). Deschanel, working from Melissa Mathison and Stephen Zito’s screenplay, admittedly gets The Escape Artist off to a promising start, as the movie opens with a compelling sequence in which Danny presents himself to the police and claims that he can escape from a prison cell within one hour. From there, however, the film, which subsequently flashes back into the events leading up to that point, segues into a slow-moving and hopelessly uneventful drama revolving around the protagonist’s low-key exploits – with the movie’s pervasive lack of drama or tension result in a palpably flat atmosphere that proves disastrous (ie none of this is even remotely interesting). The less-than-engrossing vibe is exacerbated by O’Neal’s competent yet bland turn as the central character (ie Danny generally comes off as a garden-variety scrappy kid), and although Julia delivers an expectedly compelling performance, the film is simply never able to raise itself up to the level of the actor and his various costars. The inclusion of a relatively engaging jailbreak sequence towards the end briefly injects the proceedings with a much-needed burst of energy, yet this interlude arrives far too late to compensate for the movie’s otherwise lackluster atmosphere.

** out of ****