Here’s The Escape, Neill Blomkamp’s action-packed BMW ad

By Sam Barsanti | October 25, 2016 | 8:21pm

Aux Features Film

Here’s The Escape, Neill Blomkamp’s action-packed BMW ad

As fun as Matthew McConaughey’s Lincoln ads are, they don’t actually make the cars look as cool as he wants you to think they do. (But come on, they’re Lincolns. Steve McQueen couldn’t make those look cool.) As a remedy of sorts to boring and stuffy car commercials, BMW has now created The Escape, a sequel to/revival of its early-2000s anthology ad series The Hire. The originals starred Clive Owen as a badass wheelman in a series of BMW-sponsored shorts directed by hotshot filmmakers, and this new installment puts Owen back in the driver’s seat and District 9’s Neill Blomkamp behind the camera. We reported on The Escape being in the works last month, and now BMW has released the full, 10-minute action short online.

In addition to Owen, The Escape features Dakota Fanning, Jon Bernthal, and Vera Farmiga, though only Owen actually gets to do cool stuff in a Bimmer. There isn’t much plot, but you don’t need much plot when a helicopter gets destroyed with a car. Besides, the whole thing is trying to sell you a BMW, not tell a moving story. You can see The Escape below, but before you go out and try to do this cool stuff in real life, just remember that a car like the one he’s driving will cost you at least $60,000.