Review: Getaway (2013)

Cast: Ethan Hawke, Selena Gomez, Jon Voight
Director: Courtney Solomon
Country: USA
Genre: Action | Crime
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Notes: Getaway opens theatrically today, August 30th.

There was a time when Ethan Hawke was a fairly recognizable name. He was cut from that specific 90s cloth. A little bit dirty, with scraggly beard and long greasy hair, his uniform was the grungy flannel; he would indulge in deep philosophical discussions on the meaning of life while remaining perpetually unemployed. However, as the world grew up, it left Hawke behind. Film posters carried his name with an ever increasing infrequency, and when he did pop up on screen, it was typically greeted with surprise. Not a, “not this guy” attitude, more along the lines of, “oh, so he’s still working”. This summer, Hawke reminded us just why he was so popular a generation ago, delightfully shepherding Before Midnight to screens. Nevertheless, he seems set to squander all that goodwill. Getaway is his third film of the summer of 2013, and with his trend of diminishing returns, let’s hope it’s his last.

Brent Magna’s (Hawke) wife has been taken. As he enters his house in shambles, he receives a call from the mysterious man behind the kidnapping. Magna must follow the man’s every instruction and successfully complete a series of tasks, or his wife will be murdered. For his assignments he will need one thing, a Shelby Mustang Super Snake. As soon as he steals the car, his mission to rescue his wife begins.

From the plot summary alone, the derivative nature of the film is evident. Take the idea of Taken and stir in the villainous type of Phone Booth and shake vigorously for a final product that fails to match the quality of either of its ingredients.

From the plot summary alone, the derivative nature of the film is evident. Take the idea of Taken and stir in the villainous type of Phone Booth and shake vigorously for a final product that fails to match the quality of either of its ingredients. Once you take the time to look at the film without these familiarities, it’s pretty hard to even identify a complete story. There’s the bit about his wife, who is no more than a nameless damsel-in-distress. Her entire existence can be boiled down to a series of screams and pleads for help. There is also some banking plot that manages to rope in Selena Gomez’s character, because if the film is sure of anything it’s that there is no room for coincidence. No, the story is not meant to intrigue or really interest the audience, this film is for one thing and one thing only: car crashes.

The film boasts its numerous camera setups. The car is garishly covered in cameras, to the point where the villain must comment on his addition to the vehicle, because otherwise it’d be just baffling. Director Courtney Solomon, of An American Haunting and Dungeons & Dragons (such prestige), is far too excited about his volume of cameras. He is so captivated by the many different shots that he just can’t help but use them all. There are a far too many cuts for the film to be considered healthy; each shot barely lasts a few seconds. The ever changing viewpoint does not intensify the energy; instead it makes the scenes feel frantic and disjointed. There is one nearly minute long stretch, where we finally stay with one camera, and this moment is truly impressive in the footage captured. The speed and intensity of the footage admittedly escalates the tension. But worry not; it quickly gets back to its pedestrian ways. A great many cars are destroyed and I’m sure that the many stunt drivers are supremely talented, but the performances just aren’t on the screen. The impressive stunt work gets lost in a dizzying array of jumping shots that make the chases more difficult to watch than enjoyable.

The junk yard’s worth of destroyed cars is all that the film has going for it. The writing is horrendously amateur. Writers Gregg Maxwell Parker and Sean Finegan do not have any apparent understanding of conversation construction.

The junk yard’s worth of destroyed cars is all that the film has going for it. The writing is horrendously amateur. Writers Gregg Maxwell Parker and Sean Finegan do not have any apparent understanding of conversation construction. The interactions are painful in their inauthenticity. Long stretches overflow with exposition simply because they couldn’t figure out any other way to explain the absurd premise to the audience. Gomez’s character in particular is chockfull of so much convenient knowledge that by the end it is laughable how ineptly she handles the situations. She is a tech savvy, wealthy teenager with a deep abiding love for cars, and an endless cavalcade of the latest and greatest technological products. Despite her ability to easily hack systems through her iPad and alter the functions of a camera simply by fiddling with it, she believes that the best way to get her car back is by pointing a gun in the face of its thief. She is not shown to be tough and her mere possession of a gun is barely understandable. It certainly doesn’t help matters that Ethan Hawke appears to be doing his best Batman impression, believing that speaking in hushed and gravelly tones is the same as being dramatic. Oh, and that villain. His intentions are never even remotely close to understandable and if you are the least bit surprised when the identity of the actor is revealed, well you should probably go and watch more films.

Perhaps there were good intentions behind the film. In its use of multiple onboard cameras, it does offer plenty of unique ways to view a car crash. Nevertheless, it never gets past this idea. If this were on YouTube, a flirtation with a length past two minutes would make it feel tedious. For a feature length film, it is painful to watch. The leads have nearly no chemistry as they gurgle out the cliché-laden script. If any part of the cast or crew deserves praise, it is the stunt team. Cars upon cars smash into one another in every way possible, and the collisions are not assembled in a computer. That is real metal bending and snapping (the bend and snap, works every time). Unfortunately, it is incredibly hard to even catch a glimpse of the speeding cars amid the ever changing viewpoint. Getaway is a failure across the board. It is the cinematic equivalent of a six-year-old excitedly smashing his toy cars together for 90 minutes.

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Derek Deskins

Staff Film Critic

Derek was the only engineer at Northeastern University taking a class on German film and turning a sociology research paper into an examination of Scorsese’s work. Still living in Boston, MA, he blatantly abuses his Netflix account, but can never seem to get his Instant Queue below 200. He continues to fight the stigma that being good at math means you are not any no good at writing. I good write, very much.

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