Getaway Movie Review
Films like this will definitely make you want to get away.
I like to believe that movies should be like DNA or fingerprints in that no two should be the same. This is an attitude that runs into some rough spots when I see clear remakes like Red Dawn or Footloose, but I am more interested in the idea that each movie, for good or ill, has something to make it distinct from all the other movies out there.
The distinguishing characteristic of this film (and the best way to describe it) is lazy. I don’t think I have seen a film this consistently lazy in years. This isn’t the kind of lazy one finds in someone who wants to take the afternoon off so he can take a nap in the park while work is piling up. That’s amateur lazy as far as this film is concerned. This is the kind of lazy you find in someone who wallows in a pigsty composed of his own filth and dead skin cells, refusing to move unless there is actual danger of death and keeping his mouth open in hopes of a fly or spider crawling down his throat, saving him the effort of picking up nearby dead cockroaches and actually masticating them.
Everything that smacks of effort is avoided like a plagued skunk. A believable story and motivation is hard to write, so let’s just write down of the ramblings of the homeless meth addict down the street, run it through Google translator, and call it a day. Stunt driving choreography is hard work, so we’ll just shoot a bunch of cars driving and flipping and edit together later. Hiring people who speak with a Bulgarian accent (or even Bulgarian) might take more than 10 minutes so lets just hire the usual suspects with perfect American accents (even the wife who is supposed to be Bulgarian). Acting coaches cost money so we’ll just run on the assumption that all of our actors can pull any scene needed just by looking good. Good direction costs is expensive too, especially when a decent director wants to re-shoot bad scenes (hey, film doesn’t grown on trees you know) so we’ll just hire whatever bozo is drinking free coffee at SAG headquarters (for the record I just made that up and really don’t know anything about director Courtney Solomon. He may secretly be another Scorsese but his only two other directing credits are an American Haunting from 2006 and Dungeons and Dragons from 2000. These films garnered a 12% and 10% Rotten Tomatoes rating respectively so I guess the joke is on me).
Ethan Hawke seems to have adopted the Star Trek approach to film career in that he alternates between really great and really toxic projects. He goes from Before Midnight to this medical waste. I first saw him in one of my favorite movies, Training Day, only to have to see him do Daybreakers. He is the Dr. Jeckle/Mr. Hyde of movie careers, and this one is clearly a Mr. Hyde experience.
Selena Gomez was obviously included in this film in an attempt to draw young viewers (and capitalize on the freakish and inexplicable success of Spring Breakers, the movie equivalent of whooping cough) but my God did she feel forced into this film. I am in almost all ways a fan of hot women in films so you can imagine how grating for me she had to be for me to say I absolutely hated her character with the force of 10,000 wet concrete tsunamis. Every scene with her felt fake as hell and she ground on my last raw nerve like a cheese grater. I’m sure she’s a lovely person and I know she has had some great Disney success, but she just can’t pull “street” in any way. Also, if the movie is already PG-13 it’s OK to have her or any other human female show more than 2% of their skin. She was literally in a hoodie the entire film. If she isn’t down with showing a little skin (something I can say based on past films she probably doesn’t have a problem with) then find some beach scene to show us for no reason. It would not be any more out of place than any other scene in this film, and there is only so much Ethan Hawke’s face and/or Budapest police cars flipping I can take in one sitting.
Speaking of the police in this film, it looks they all trained with Roscoe P. Coltrane at the Hazzard County School of Police Driving (Dukes image courtesy of the Retro TV Show t shirt category). Somehow they can’t drive down a road without flipping a car, and it appears the city of Sofia has an inexhaustible supply of police cars and a religious aversion to setting up road blocks or spike traps. The car chase scenes (or rather, the majority of the film) got so ridiculous that after a while I had to make the film more tolerable by pretending that instead of driving around the main guy had telekinetic powers and was flipping the cars around with his mind (if you watch this bomb it actually makes it a better film).
I suppose at some point I should get into what can laughingly be called the story, but let me talk a minute about the villain. All great action films are based around the antagonist, and the more engaging and interesting the hero’s enemy is the better the film. In this film the villain is a faceless, motivation-less voice on the phone who seems to be being a dick just because…honestly I don’t know. I can’t even say he’s just a dick since we learn absolutely nothing about him. The lack of a villain made this film extremely hard to latch on to. Also what was the deal with this guys plan? He needs Ethan Hawke’s character to drive around causing havoc and his whole multi billion dollar plan is centered around this, but then he gives Brent (Hawke’s character) about a million chances to mess up and ruin the whole thing. First off Brent has to steal the car from a high security garage where it had been left for him to use. What if the mirrors had been misaligned and Brent ran the thing into a wall? Every scene is a perfect chance for this car to hang itself on a guard rail or break it’s suspension driving down some stairs, but Brent doing all this is critical to the plan to steal steal 2 billion Euros? Why did he even need to extort Brent into doing this anyway? He managed to hire guys to impersonate him and take the fall, probably incurring decades of prison time and a few other guys to murder policemen and die in horrific motorcycle accidents. Why not just hire a couple of good drivers? The whole plan was a steaming pile of stupid, and without knowing anything about the villain you can’t understand why this plan is anything but the adolescent fantasies of two 16 year old guys who play way too much GTA.
Of course. I just checked IMDB and the two writers have no other writing credits. When did script writing become something you called the local temp agency to get done in an afternoon?
Ugh. The story. Brent Magna (Ethan Hawke-Training Day, the Purge, Gattaca) has to steal a specific car because his Bulgarian wife (Rebecca Budig-Guiding Light, All My Children, Batman Forever) has been kidnapped. (For the record his Bulgarian wife speaks flawless English). He steals the Chevy Cobra and finds it covered in cameras. The voice on the phone tells him to go on a pedestrian mall driving rampage and escape the inept police. He then is told to wait in a garage where Selena Gomez (her film credit lists her character as the Kid, but I refuse to cater to that level of sloth. Oh, yeah. Selena Gomez-Another Cinderella Story, Spring Breakers, Monte Carlo) jumps in the car and holds a gun on him. He gets the gun away and finds out that the car was hers before it was stolen and rather than let the police handle it she opted to find a gun and take care of business (also for the record, she has a face that belongs on the Disney channel. Seeing her try to be some kind of bad ass is painfully laughable).
Anyway, at that point the voice (credited as the Voice, to my mounting frustrating) orders Brent to kill her but then when he refuses tells him she is integral to his plan (see what I mean about stupid? What if Brent was a little more cold blooded, or she had reminded him of an ex girlfriend who dumped him and he capped her? How does the plan progress?). Anyway, imagine about an hour of watching someone play Grand Theft Auto for another hour and you have all of Act II down. The plan is to steal data related to off shore accounts so the Voice can pocket it all. Brent and Selena eventually sort of turn the tables but then it turns out it was all part of the Voice’s incredibly complex plan anyway. In the end everyone wins (except for the guy the Voice paid to take the fall and rot in prison for years).
The stars.
Umm. Hmm. I could say the car was pretty cool, but I am more of a classic muscle car guy. This is awkward. I honestly can’t think of anything, and I really am trying. A film with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Zero stars.
The black holes.
The only way the story could have been more juvenile and ass backwards would be if it had been written by a group of 12 year old boys who had all recently suffered severe blunt trauma to the head. Three black holes. The disparity of a hot girl that I hate so much in the Selena Gomez character might have finally turned me gay (I wish. Unfortunately I am still into women. I say unfortunately because it seems like none of them are into me). Two black holes. The villains plan was so stupid and ridiculously complicated that it would have failed had Brent farted at the wrong time. One black hole. The villain sucked. One black hole. The driving action sucked on the side of ridiculousness. One black hole. No driving stunt choreographer to speak of. It seems like the director was programmed with “10 Police Car Drives. 20 Police Car Flips Over. 30 GOTO 10”. One black hole. Quick cut action sequencing. One black hole. There was one long sequence towards the end that was clearly sped up footage. One black hole. The fact that they filmed the entire movie in Sofia, Bulgaria but had no one in the film speak Bulgarian or even with a real accent. One black hole. The “plot twist” at the end can be summed up with the statement “Remember that bad guy you were chasing? Well, the guy you caught is not the bad guy and the real bad guy is still in a club around the world. Surprise!” (oops. Spoiler alert). One black hole. Dialog so bad you will wish you were deaf and only spoke in ASL. One black hole. Overall a tremendous waste of time and brain cells. Two black holes. Total: sixteen black holes.
A total of sixteen black holes!!! Possibly a new record. Is this film really this bad? I can say without qualm or hesitation yes. It is grindingly awful. It has a 2% score on Rotten Tomatoes and even that feels generous. It is 90 minutes you will regret losing and never see again. Pass. Date movie? Only if your date is a Real Doll and even then she will probably be bored. Bathroom break? Since the writers and director seem to have just gone to the bathroom all over the screen odds are this film could be considered one long break.
Thanks for reading. Almost done with my last convention for a while so more to see soon. Feel free to follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Post comments here on this film or my review. If you have off topic questions or suggestions feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
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