REVIEW: Getaway (2013)

Getaway is probably the worst movie of the year and I can say that comfortably despite it only being mid September.  14 minutes in I was already checking my phone not only to see how much more of this crap I’d have to sit through, but to also take note on how much further the movie dared to go without having absolutely positively no plot.  The answer to that is that it dared to go very far indeed, right ’till the fucking end credits.  This review will act as a warning beacon, do not see Getaway.  If you’re part of the male demographic, or perhaps for example like me you got a thing supercharged Mustangs, flee and don’t fall for this trap. Avoid, avoid avoid.  If you’re reading this, be thankful that someone else has walked the coals and endured so that you don’t have to.

After his wife is taken hostage, Ethan Hawke is told to drive around town recklessly by Jon Voight over the phone, or he’ll kill the hostage.  Welp, that about wraps up the description of this ‘story’, it really is that vacant and brain dead.  What makes it worse is that you can’t escape this glaring problem by indulging in chase sequences featuring a howling supercharged Mustang, because those are just as bad as the plot.  Dull crap filmed on the cheap at 5am in Bulgaria, with $700 1990’s cop cars giving chase.  Which leads me to a point, how is it that an Opel Astra, a piece of shit car with 100BHP can repeatedly throughout the movie keep pace with a Shelby GT500 Super Snake?  By the time Hawke finds second gear, the chase should be over.  It’s slow and dull, yet frantic and messy action.  Did you know that in this 85 minute movie, there are over 6000 (!) cuts?  The direction and editing make Chris Nolan’s dogs dinner action sequences look like the work of George Miller by comparison, just a manic nonsensical head-fuck of sheer frustration.

But something even worse lurks than the ‘aw jeez’ story, or the blatantly obvious fact that the director is not a ‘car guy’ (no director who likes wheels could manage to make this car look so bland).  That something worse is named Selena Gomez.  Gomez, or at least her casting in this movie, has redefined what the word cringe means to me, pest extraordinaire!  I mean, why add Gomez to this movie?  We all know the only people who like her are 8 year old girls and closet paedophiles (she looks 10 years old, 21 or not), neither of whom care about action movies.  To use a quote from a Dirty Harry movie, she’s about as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool.  Combine this headache/brat with zero acting capacity and horrible dialogue and it soon becomes apparent why Hawke looks so utterly depressed in this movie – I wouldn’t want to be in that car either.

Let me put this simply:  Getaway is a heap of garbage written on the fly and filmed on the cheap.  Now let us never speak of it again.

3/10