Spoiler Alert:
I shall be completely dismantling Getaway, fine tuning the film and checking that each part works in order to determine if it runs like a dream or takes us for a ride. So, read on only if you have already seen Getaway or don’t plan to.
Saw this had a terrible score on IMDB and I believe every film has an equal and inalienable right to be mocked mercilessly.
0:01:56 You walk into your flat and the Christmas tree is in the ground, your belongings are strewn about, the mirrors are broken there are blood stains on the floor… Do walk slowly around the place, and call out your wife’s name in a “Honey, did you go mental and try to kill yourself by running into things as fast as you could?” voice? Or do you freak out and call the police? Our hero chooses the path of least intelligence.
0:04:08 The basic plot is, Ethan Hawke’s wife is kidnapped. The kidnapper (The Voice) gives Ethan/Brent Magna a car loaded with cameras and will call with instructions on what Ethan/Brent has to do to get his wife back. So it’s like Die Hard 3 on Speed. Interesting that Brent Magna went straight for the car and didn’t even consider calling the coppers. He likes driving cars more than his wife, evidently.
0:05:33 The director (Courtney Solomon) frequently shoots through the front windscreen, which gives one the sensation of watching someone else play a racing game. I certainly feel like I’m being played.
0:07:22 I like how he has to take off his sunglasses to answer his mobile.
0:08:33
Get rid of your phone
instructs the kidnapper
Ethan drops it on the ground but doesn’t destroy it. If it’s an IPhone, that may be enough.
0:08:58 Someplace vaguely eastern European is Sofia, Bulgaria. I’ve never been in Sofia… but her husband has.
0:09:57 He’s driving around much later (it’s now night) with no direction or guidance, and when the car phone rings, he acts put out. As though he can’t be bothered to save his wife. As though she were a yapping dog that needed walking in the middle of a sexual foray.
0:10:36 For those who would like a Getaway drinking game, take a shot whenever they show Brent changing gears. You’ll be drunk faster than he can go from 0 to 60.
0:14:19 Not just another flashback, but a flashback we’ve already seen before. Déjà vu all over again.
0:20:49 Someone get Al K Hall on the phone, that may be more than a Selena Gomez look-alike.
0:20:52 I’ve just checked IMDB and that is indeed her. She plays the rich daughter of some banker and it’s her car that was stolen and given to Brent.
0:23:47 By my estimation, he’s killed roughly 3 police officers through car accidents already. I realize the life of an eastern European lawman isn’t worth as much as that of a white American teenager, but I’m starting to hope Brent and his wife die soon to save the rest of the country.
0:25:30 The action scenes are filmed like vomit, in colourful chunks with bits that stink.
0:28:13 Selena Gomez sure is acting bitchy. Which means she’s probably not acting. What’s more, she’s taken her cell phone to document the ride to clear her name. This is all the more interesting in that Ethan threw her phone out of the car several miles ago.
0:30:01 Not only is Selena Gomez a genius with cars, she’s also a computer whiz (which is to say she’s acting again). In fact, she’s so good at computers that she can crack the car’s video feed with an IPad in such a way that The Voice doesn’t notice. WTF!?
0:32:15 I suspect the editing was done by cats with ADD, judging by how quickly the scenes change. To mask bad directing, Courtney Solomon seems to be gluing images together in a random fashion.
0:39:08 Selena/The Kid is on the phone with 911. She’s going to be the only one surprised when it turns out the voice at the other end of the line is really the kidnapper.
0:39:14 Didn’t take me long to be right.
0:39:52 The Voice blew up a power station and framed Selena/The Kid like she was a Justin Bieber photograph.
0:41:56 Am I the only one who’s noticed Selena Gomez sounds like a man-duck when she speaks?
0:45:46 WTF!? Ethan made his car invisible to the police by turning off the headlamps. #Tricky #Stupid
0:46:05 The Kid figured out The Voice is making Ethan destroy certain roads to block them off so that there’s only one way out of the city. You know you’re in trouble when Selena Gomez is the brains of the operation.
0:47:45 The Voice tells the dyslexic duo to rob Selena Gomez’s father’s bank. The whole idea this is being done to frame the driver and the teen is absurd. All she has to do is use her IPad to take a short video of the monitor in the car with the wife in chains and The Voice telling them what to do and inside three minutes the police will forget about the diabetic duet and be hot on the trail of the the real criminal.
0:50:26 These have got to be the most boring car accidents ever.
0:51:23
I hacked into the server connected to these cameras and put on a loop of us driving.
She did this by pressing one button on her IPad. There’s an interesting app I didn’t know they had in ITunes.
0:55:09 A 3-man motorcycle crew is stealing a computer full of bank accounts from a 5-man team of guards who either have no aim or no bullets.
0:55:12 I’m just going to come right out and day say it, shall I? This film is WTF at its core (way too flawed). The premise of this entire story is that a team of people kidnap a retired driver’s wife to force him to wreak havoc throughout the whole city simply to tie up traffic and then kidnap a teenage girl and use her to rob her father’s bank where they know they’re sure to get arrested. The only plan more complicated than this is…
- Using straight men to plan a dinner party
- Making Republicans save the planet
- Getting rich people to pay taxes
- Asking politicians to legislate marriage
What could go wrong? If the kidnapping goes awry, if the driver calls the police or has an accident or, far more likely, gets stopped by the police, if the teenage girl runs away or refuses to rob a bank she’s sure she’ll get arrested doing then the mastermind’s plan is ruined. Reminds me of that cartoon with the mice that want to take over the world.
0:56:57 Brent’s trying to out-manoeuvre four heavily-armed motorcyclists wielding machine guns with his car and The Kid yells at him to drive more carefully because she wants to hack the computer. Beak seat driver’s education.
0:57:47
Oh my god! Do something! Get us out of here!
The Kid has changed her mind and is now yelling at the man for doing what she told him to do in the first place
Nope. I walk right past the easy sexist jokes.
0:58:40
This is Sofia police department. Pull over the car now.
Police using loud speaker from the cruiser’s sound system
They choose English immediately because only an American could cause that much destruction in a foreign country.
0:59:40 The police stow their arsenal and let Brent drive away because he shows them a gun.
I can’t believe that worked.
Brent
I can’t believe you believed we could believe it would work.
1:00:38 Now that the police have stopped chasing them again and are no doubt in some office somewhere eating the Bulgarian equivalent of donuts and wishing they’d heard of something called a helicopter, Brent pulls over to let The Kid out but she refuses because WTF. Evidently she only wants the opposite of what Ethan wants. Must be practice for when she gets married.
1:03:16 Driving through a train yard to escape another chap on a motorcycle, Ethan is forced to repeatedly drive through mountainous stacks of boxes. Luckily, they are only used to store air.
1:05:18 The Kid says they can use the video cameras attached to the cars to show the feed directly to the police. This idea would’ve come in handy an hour ago. She does this by tapping her IPad screen 5 times. There truly is an app for everything.
1:06:58 They show the Sofia Police Live Video Feed caption for what feels like hours and constantly show us the video camera at the same time to remind us that the director thinks we’re too stupid to remember the images are being broadcast. To be fair to him, we were stupid enough to watch this film.
1:09:36 After we are once again reminded about the cameras and the video feed, the police arrive. Some thugs surrender, others grab The Kid and pull her into the vehicle.
1:10:02 Ethan decides to abandoned his reunited wife to chase down the motorcar that has The Kid in it because he’s ready for a trade-in on a younger model (/ singer). The police are too busy not caring to think about stopping him.
1:17:47 Unfortunately for Ethan, the evil SUV drives faster and handles better than his race car.
1:18:41 Thug driver throws The Kid out of his car like a bag of McDonalds on a US interstate and Ethan rolls his vehicle trying to avoid hitting her.
1:18:51 In a supreme moment of WTF, Ethan’s car moves faster rolling than driving, so while it’s flipping it catches up with the evil SUV and crashes into it.
1:20:09 A strange phone rings in Ethan’s wife’s pocket and she hands it to him. They watch as the man they believed to be the ringleader is put into a cop car, but they’ll learn they were mistaken.
1:22:03 It’s Angelina Jolie’s father speaking with a bad accent. Seems he was running the operation from the middle of a crowded New York party (and WTF!?), and now he escapes with the money. I think the producers were counting on a sequel, but they won’t Getaway with that!
Tally Ho’
- WTF!?’s: 19, and that’s a conservative effort
- When to Follow: When your Nintendo game console is down and you’re going through Super Mario Kart withdrawal
Left Over WTF (Way Too Funny) Photos
Prints suitable for sharing!
What to Follow Up
1,2,3 WTF!? (Watch the Film) 
Best review of this goddam shitty film I’ve ever read. It’s even better than mine (coming this February, to a blink-and-you-miss-it edition of Fernby Films) which isn’t saying a lot. Love the picture captions too, they’re hilarious, dude.
This was just an outright mess. And was it just me, but that “power plant” they were supposed to blow up look more like some kind of low-rent sub-station than a major city-powering facility? Fail.
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You’re far too kind, Sir Rodney,
We can only say, however, that this is the best Getaway review until you publish yours in February!
And the power station looked like it was made with shoe boxes for a Barbie city, to be sure.
WTF Rodney! (Watch the Film)
Saint Pauly
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Nice review. This movie was utter garbage, but you somehow found a way to make it the least bit entertaining. I don’t know why I haven’t seen anything for him yet, but count this as me putting in my ballot for Best Supporting Actor, “Jon Voight’s jowls.”
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Dan the Man!
Thanks ever so much for chiming in and for your kind words. Jon Voight’s jowls! I love it!
WTF Dan! (Watch the Film),
Saint Pauly
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