Film Review: "Getaway"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 30 August 2013 12:37

Written by Matt Oakes

"Getaway"
Directed by Courtney Solomon
Starring Ethan Hawke, Selena Gomez, Jon Voight, Rebecca Budig
Action, Crime
90 Mins
PG-13

"Get in, get out" Getaway's tagline reads - an obvious parallel to the ideology that went on back in the writer's room in this fart-and-hairspray fireball of a movie. Repping ADHD filmmaking at its most nauseous and nonchalant, Courtney Solomon (Dungeons and Dragons) directs Getaway like an 11-year old waving around a smart phone, clicking the camera on and off with no intent and no semblance of artistry. Each sequence leapfrogs between an unmeasured amount of angles, demonstrating Solomon's lack of faith in his framing and making the experience of watching it akin to a scatter-shot montage lingering on for 90 minutes. It's a grueling slog intent on leaving a wake of smashed-up vehicles - I counted 23 un-inventively totaled police cars, countless wrecked civilian automobiles and five exploding motorcycles - but not much else.

Even star Ethan Hawke's devilish charm couldn't savage this Titanic of a sinking ship. Getting his leg snagged, Hawke is pulled down to the festering depths where the terminally "playful" mind of Solomon vacuously dreams of smashing and whooshing and banging and boom booms.

I've become an increasingly avid fan of Hawke's - and found his work in this year's Before Midnight to be the finest performance of 2013 to date - but he is saddled with some dialogue that's so clunky that I feel I have to begrudge him simply for not outright refusing to say them at all. A late stage, "I know where she is!" (spoken to himself and no-one else) is the type of wrong-kind-of-laugh-inducing ringer that invites a level 5 face-palming. It's just embarrassing for everyone involved and it's nothing short of sad to see such a talented actor stoop to such lows.

I guess this brings us to what would be referred to here as the "plot". Since about 95% of the film takes place inside a moving Shelby GT500, you can imagine that the plot lacking in both quantity and quality. Hawke is Brent Magna - a retired racecar driver, disgraced from the tracks for his recklessness and a tendency to destroy cars. On Christmas Day in Bulgaria (because where else would a disgraced racer want to spend the holidays?) his wife is nabbed by some faceless baddies and Magna is told that he's got to drive a car into a bunch of stuff or they'll kill her. Without a bat of an eye, Magna's in the car, skidding his car into the midst of crowded parks, missing the mobs of holiday-cheerers by inches and thinking none the less of it.

The screenplay undercutting this vapid turd reads like a cheap, pointless and, worst of all, unasked for mashup of Saw and Fast and Furious. It involves a metric fuck-ton of driving, a heft of smashing, a dastardly villain who we only get to know by his (non-intimidating) voice, and a pinch of walking for good measure. Just kidding. We never once see Hawke move his legs, unless he's a-shiftin' with those racey feet of his. Like a road trip to hell with all the relatives we like least, we're trapped inside the car for what quickly starts to seem like an eternity. The worst part of it all, Selena Gomez somehow snuck herself along for the ride.

But at least one consolation comes from this ten-car pileup of a film -  Gomez's acting career can officially be swept under the rug once and for all. A young hacker known only as "The Kid", Gomez is plainly more of a hack than a hacker. Name me one real life hacker whose idea of hacking means jamming their sausage fingers at an iPad with buttons like "Override" on the main screen and I'll withdrawal my complaint. Perhaps hacking in the 21st century really is that easy but I seriously doubt it.

On the "hack" side of the equation though, there is overwhelming evidence that Gomez couldn't act her way out of a bologna sandwich. There is not a single second (not the teensiest, tiniest crumb of time) where we believe that Gomez is capable of a tenth of the technological feats her character is supposedly carrying out. I could more easily believe that my friend's dog Lucy could carve an ice swan than this curmudgeon do anything technical beyond tweeting a rave pic. Perhaps even more offensive are her completely unwarranted personality swings. Shifting on a dime scene-to-scene without any connection to past progress, Gomez can't seem to keep her character straight. Never has it been so evident that a movie is not made front-to-back as Gomez seems incapable of keeping her arc linear without retreating into territory she's already supposed to have moved beyond. 

Another character who gets the old writers block treatment is Jon Voight's strangely brewed criminal mastermind. With a nonspecific accent about as intimidating as a stale cupcake, and just about as flavorless, Voight's grin is the only believable thing he's selling here. Why? Because he's laughing his way to the bank. His performance calls for so little that he may as well have been sitting in a sound booth and munching on bon-bons. That is the gist of his performance: sitting around, munching on bon-bons and grinning at the idiots handing him money to do it.

Like 70s exploitation without the sly, sarcastic sense of fun, Getaway leaves its trail of half-baked destruction but buries any sense of charmed wit along the way. Instead, this thriller on life support has its excitement pumped in at the rate of dial-up 

internet. With only one long-shot in the entirety of the film worth mentioning at all, the result is so watered down that there's hardly any taste left in it at all. Unfortunate proof that Solomon is a powder keg of a director, Getaway is little more than a generic waste of time and money. It may strike a chord for Shelby enthusiasts with a love-hate (but mostly hate) relationship with Bulgaria, but everyone else: do yourself a favor and steer clear.

D-

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