Getaway
The movie starts up right away with former race car driver Brent Magna (Hawke) coming home to find his wife abducted. A man tells him to go to a garage and pick up the sports car that is there, and to start moving; he does so unquestioningly. Later, "The Kid" (Gomez - no name is ever given for her) tries to carjack him with a gun, but he disarms her; turns out it's her car, and the man on the phone has stolen it. The man tells him to kill her, but he refuses, so they keep going. The two of them must find Brent's wife and also trick the man on the phone so that they can escape the night unscathed, despite the missions he is making them do, such as crashing into public events and venues.
The movie started off promisingly. I'm a fan of Hawke's - Gattaca is one of my favorite sci-fi movies - and I'll watch mostly anything that he's in. Once Selena's character was introduced and I realized that they're never leaving the car, though (for the most part), the film started to look bleaker. About an hour into the film, I started to get bored, and the end of the movie just made me angry - we meet the man on the phone (who ends up being Jon Voight, actually) but absolutely nothing is explained. The movie also takes place in the Ukraine and it's never explained as to why Brent nor Gomez's character is there; inexplicably, Gomez is also wearing a Detroit Tigers cap at one point in the film too.
No, don't see this movie. I don't give out No reviews lightly, but this has to be the worst movie I've seen this year, maybe even in the past two years. When Brent is finally reunited with his wife (semi-spoiler, but not really), he has to run after Gomez - why not let the police get her? - and his wife is completely okay with that, even though she's just been kidnapped/traumatized for the past day or two. [Sure, honey! Go chase after the random girl who helped you find me! I'll just sit here and twiddle my thumbs.]
I also wanted more answers. We knew that Brent was a former race car driver, and he was in an accident so he quit that profession a while back. Why not show more flashbacks of him in his driving days, or let us know more about the relationship between him and his wife? Selena's character mentions that her dad is a rich CEO, which is why she owns such a nice car - but that's pretty much all we learn about her, other than the fact that she's a self-professed "nerd" (car and gadget junkie); more back story on her character would have been appreciated too. I thought I was making this up, also, but others agreed, that her character kept saying the same lines over and over - "Shit!" "Oh no!" etcetera - so the script wasn't very well-written either. I'd like to give Getaway a 1 or 1.5 star rating, but some of the car stunts were rather cool (yet also got rather tedious after a while, though) so I'm going to be generous; however, moviegoers should not be so generous with their wallets, as Getaway is a "must skip" movie.
Getaway is in theaters today, August 30th, and is rated PG-13 with a runtime of 90 minutes. (A generous) 2 stars out of 5.
