Getaway

There's nothing wrong with Getaway that couldn't be fixed by changing three essential things.  Those things would be the following: Firing current director Courtney Solomon (2000's Dungeons & Dragons), and replacing him with a filmmaker who knew how to shoot an action sequence.  Second, hire a competent editor who doesn't feel the need to change the shot every 2 or 3 seconds, and essentially switch back and forth between the same four angles or shots.  Finally, give the script a complete overhaul so that it understands how bad it is, and can have fun with itself, instead of taking itself so deadly seriously. 

Getaway desperately wants to be a summer thrill ride movie, but it's hard to thrill when the direction and editing make it impossible to tell what's going on at times.  It has a high energy feel, but there is just something generic about the whole package.  We get the same rapid and hastily cut images of cars crashing, exploding, or ramming into each other to such a degree that it becomes monotonous.  And yet, I felt a hint of promise at the beginning.  The film's opening scene sets up the scenario in a clear and precise way that wastes absolutely no time.  It's also set at Christmas time, which made me immediately think of some action films from the 1980s that used the holidays to good effect, such as the original Lethal Weapon or Die Hard.  Unfortunately, after that glimmer of hope, it's all downhill.  The story becomes needlessly dumb after an intriguing set up, and the movie could have been set at any time of year, and not been altered, aside from removing some random Christmas music from the soundtrack.

The premise: A former professional race car driver named Brett Magna (Ethan Hawke) returns to his home to find it completely trashed, and his wife missing.  In a black and white flashback, we witness how his wife (Rebecca Budig) was decorating the house for the holidays while he was away, only to have some mysterious assailants break in, beat her, and kidnap her.  Brett receives a call on his phone from a mysterious mastermind whom we never really see, but we learn at the end is played by Jon Voight.  The voice on the phone orders Brett to steal a rare Shelby Super Snake Mustang car from a nearby parking garage, and then recklessly drive about the city in a series of deadly missions if he ever wants to see his wife again.  As the car careened through the city, and was forced to make its way through highly populated parks and areas without slowing down, it eventually took a superhuman effort on my part not to view this movie as some kind of low-rent remake of 1994's Speed.  To further ram the similarity home, there's even a scene where Hawke uses a video loop of himself driving in order to fool the mysterious villain, just like Keanu Reeves did in that earlier movie.

Things become further complicated when, while in the process of driving recklessly around the city, Brett is carjacked by a teenage girl with a gun (Selena Gomez).  She's forced to go along for the ride, and at first, we think she's just a random thug kid who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  However, it soon turns out that she has a connection to both the stolen car, and the ultimate goal that the villain hopes to accomplish before the night is over.  It doesn't really matter, at least not in the screenplay by first-time writers Sean Finegan and Gregg Maxwell Parker.  That's because neither Brett nor the teenage hostage (who is not given a name, and is only referred to as "The Kid" in the credits) are given personalities, interests, or things to talk about outside of the plot.  In fact, they seldom talk to each other at all, as the movie is so dead-set on being a fast-paced thriller, it often forgets to slow down long enough as to explain why these two characters start to bond during the course of the film.

That's really what sinks Getaway.  For all of its non-stop, frantic action, there's nothing to be invested in or care about.  I have no doubt that you could make an exciting movie based on such a bare bones premise.  Heck, it's been done very successfully before.  But there's just such an amateurish feel to this.  Ethan Hawke doesn't so much act, as hold on to one facial expression the entire film.  Jon Voight is literally phoning in his performance for much of the movie.  And Selena Gomez makes another unsuccessful attempt to shed her "Disney girl" teen-friendly image, after Spring Breakers from earlier this year.  In that film, she tried to rely on sex appeal.  This time, she gets to say a lot of forced four-letter words in her dialogue.  Despite this, the movie is PG-13, because all of the on screen violence is so rapidly edited, we barely notice it happening.  Because of this, it's safe for kids and teens to see their favorite Disney Channel star flip people off, and swear like a sailor.

There is one great shot in the movie - It occurs late, and it involves an uncut point of view driving shot that goes on for a full minute or so, and becomes kind of thrilling as it weaves through traffic and stoplights completely uninterrupted.  Considering how inept the rest of the editing is, you wonder if the filmmakers just had a brief lapse of sanity, or if they were just trying to tease us with the kind of movie this kind have been.  By that point, the movie was beyond help, and I was just ready for it to be over.  When something dampens your spirit so much that even a truly impressive shot can't even lift you back up, you know you're just having a bad experience.

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