The sheer, head-banging monotony of action-thriller “Getaway” cannot be described in words — but I’m going to try. Imagine, if you will, the 3-minute car chase from “The Bourne Identity” — the one with Matt Damon evading the French authorities by driving a Mini Cooper through the streets of Paris — drawn out to 90 minutes, but somehow more tedious and more exasperating than that viewing experience sounds. Or, better yet, go to your kitchen, find a cooking pot and a rolling pin, place the pot on your head and bash the rolling pin against the side of the pot for an hour and a half. My condolences: you just watched “Getaway.”
It’s directed by Courtney Solomon, and it might surprise you to hear that it’s his best film so far: or at least it might surprise you until you discover his only other films are the 2000 fantasy stinker “Dungeons & Dragons” and the 2005 horror snoozer “An American Haunting.” At least he’s improving. The plot centres on retired race-car driver Brent Magna, played by Ethan Hawke, whose wife is kidnapped from their home in Sofia, Bulgaria. If he is to ever see his wife again, Magna must drive around the Bulgarian capital in a stolen Mustang and do everything a mysterious voice tells him over the car’s built-in phone system. On the other end of the line is an unseen Jon Voight, who barks, in a silly Eurotrash voice, “Do vat I say or I vill keel your vife!” over and over again.
The orders of Voight mostly have Hawke speeding down the street, deliberately crashing into random objects and outdriving the police. Basically, the film is one big extended car crash — in more ways than the filmmakers intended. As the movie progressed, I lost count of the amount of shots of Hawke shifting gears, spinning the wheel and turning his head. I also lost track of the amount of times Hawke is startled to hear police sirens start blaring behind him — I can’t imagine why he’s startled, it’s already happened about 15 times since the movie began.
The film’s fatal error — one of many errors — is in not establishing even the slightest hint of a relationship between Hawke and his abducted wife, giving us no reason to care nor indeed stay to the end credits. Hawke’s screentime with bland teen hacker sidekick Selena Gomez, the original owner of Hawke’s stolen supercar who stumbles into this mess when she tries to steal it back, certainly doesn’t make up. Even when Hawke and his wife are reunited towards the film’s end, she’s swiftly thrown to the side for (you’ll never guess what) another car chase. The only thing that should keep viewers awake at this point is the constant crashing and smashing and vrooms and wheeees. Even with all the noise, I could feel myself nodding off.
When it was released in the States, “Getaway” received an almighty kicking from the critics. Look, for example, at Metacritic, where it boasts a pathetic rating of 22/100, or at Rotten Tomatoes, where the percentage of critics who have awarded the film a positive review currently stands at a miserable 3%. Notably, Jon Voight, a disembodied voice for the majority of the runtime, doesn’t show his face until the film’s final two seconds. I can’t say I blame him.
Rating: 3/10
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