Courtney Solomon is one of those individuals who is better overseeing movie production in an office. After majorly flaming out with DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, followed five years later with the truly forgettable horror film AN AMERICAN HAUNTING, he has stayed more behind the scenes by working on the short-lived but popular 8 Films to Die For film festival and his studio After Dark Films. Now, he's back in the main seat with GETAWAY, a film that will make you wish you were observing a paycheck-happy Jeremy Irons and bad fantasy elements. It's one of the first major movie releases with a sizable film budget ($18 million) to instinctively make its picture quality look more worse than an iPhone camera. Its story is stretched out and more redundant than an episode of a reality show. The editing was done by a cat walking repeatedly on a keyboard. It's completely unfit for human consumption.
The first warning sign is the location: Sofia, Bulgaria. Not to offend the country or those living there but no American viewer honestly cares about the hidden European nation save for cinephiles and bad movie lovers. The film kicks off by combining TAKEN with CRANK; a former race car driver (Ethan Hawke) walks into his trashed apartment, with his wife missing and a suspicious cellphone ringing on the table. The mysterious voice on the other end tells him that he has to do a job for him for one night or else his wife will be killed. All of his tasks depend on him being behind the wheel of a customized Shelby Mustang, which he steals right off the bat. After completing a few of them, he's accosted by a young punk (Selena Gomez), who says that the vehicle belongs to her. She is then forcibly inducted into the criminal proceedings and may serve as the only one capable of helping the unlucky driver out of this nightmare.
And right there you have the second warning: Selena Gomez as a gearhead/hacker. Acid Burn, she is certainly not. I did see the promising potential of Gomez with her turn in SPRING BREAKERS but here, the chipmunk-cheeked starlet is a monotone mess. Maybe it was the Bulgarian catering or her frequent script glances with what she had to convey but she brings nothing but guilty laughs and teeth-grinding irritation. Hawke can be bad at times, particularly his first couple of lines when tries to be cool, but he at least tries to make losing his wife feel like a grave threat to his sanity. Then, there's Jon Voight of all people as the bad guy. When filmmakers go the DIE HARD 3 route of having an evil voice-over, they hire someone with a distinctive accent in order to get the right sinister element. They don't hire a shameless actor with a history of questionable vocal deliveries. Solomon also wanted to remind the viewer of his bad movie past so he hired back fat Bruce Payne for a cameo.
Despite my negativity toward the actors, what were they expecting and able to do with such a dirt poor script? Gregg Maxwell Parker and Sean Finegan are so bad at characterization that the characters are legitimately listed as "The Girl", "The Voice", and "Distinguished Man". The action sequences are less of a plotted-out series of escalating turmoil than they are annoying mission parameters in a sandbox video game ("You have ten minutes to evade the cops"). Worst, it's so bare-bones than the dialogue and story beats keep repeating in a vicious circle. Here's what is on the mobius strip: "You are to do this!"; "I can't do that!"; "You must or your wife dies!"; "You can't do that, it's illegal and dangerous!"; "I must do it, girl, or else my wife dies!". The only thing they seemed to get right is the change in time on the car's GPS but that credit goes more to the visual tech department. Which brings up the problems surrounding and inside the car. The two idiots get away (ugh) with explaining off the small damage the car suffers throughout because it's "armored" but they keep neglecting to notice that Voight has complete eyes and ears all over the vehicle. So, when Hawke and Gomez pull a SPEED and create a video loop to fool him, Parker and Finegan forgot about the established live microphone built into the radio, the GPS that tracks their current location, plus all of the cameras that capture Gomez setting up for the loop recording.
Every single car chase starts and ends the same way: a vehicle suddenly intrudes out of nowhere with loud noises; there's a hundred or more split-second cuts all over the sides of the car; the camera zooms forward on Hawke's concerned face and Gomez' blank face; crash, bang, boom. Solomon and editor Ryan Dufrene need to head back to high school-level film school; by creating a multitude of jump cut sequences at claustrophobic levels, you aren't creating quick tempo changes in the action but frequent blurs of consciousness, especially when dealing with cars. There's a reason why NASCAR keeps the frame on the racing longer before cutting to a new shot and often from a far enough distance. The sole exception is an one-take, first person view of the Mustang speeding behind someone during the finale and even that delivers no thrills since it's just a straight line towards the barren city. If you do try to follow the chaotic vehicular violence, you'll realize that Hawke is killing off a lot of cops, possibly some innocents as well, and he's perfectly fine with it.
I mentioned CRANK earlier here which brings up a good point, that Neveldine/Taylor should have been hired to make this if Warner Bros wanted a cheap action film to dump in August. At least there the car insanity would make more sense and be creative. Solomon instead just makes another clear cut example of the degrading film quality of action movies this year.
FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5
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