Getaway (2013)

I was very skeptical about whether or not I would like Getaway before watching it.  I normally enjoy Ethan Hawke’s films, and recently he has made some good choices, i.e.  Sinister (2012) and The Purge (2013).  However, Getaway appeared a little sketchy to me.  I held off seeing the movie in theatres because I was very unsure about it, but I had to at least give it a chance on DVD.

The film is about an ex-racecar driver (Ethan Hawke) whose wife has been kidnapped.  In order to try to get her back, he is forced by the kidnappers to drive and do whatever he is told while leaving a trail of destruction and evading cops all over the city.  He is given missions with time limits attached.  Along the way, he gets caught up with a young woman whose car he was required to steal.  The two of them are in for a wild ride that will hopefully help him get his wife back.

The movie was directed by Courtney Solomon and the rest of the noteworthy cast includes Jon Voight, Selena Gomez, Rebecca Budig, Paul Freeman, and Bruce Payne.

The film gets your attention immediately.  It sort of has a Taken (2008) meets The Transporter (2002) feel to it, at first, but that quickly diminishes.  The high-speed car chases start out flashy and exciting set to the tone of dramatic car chase music.  Eventually the whole movie turns into one big car chase that will not end soon enough.

Getaway is actually pretty decent until the appearance of Selena Gomez.  Her character enters and the movie slams on the breaks and crashes.  Gomez brought nothing to her role in the film except for very poor acting skills and utter annoyance.  I found myself quickly hoping that her character would just die off.  However, I’m not even sure if her poor performance was her fault.  Everything about the character that she played seemed unbelievable.  The writers really dropped the ball when they came up with her part in the story.  This sort of had a snowball effect.

The whole movie spun out of control.  It stopped being fun and entertaining.  Instead it just felt tacky and fake.  The car chases were nothing new and the story stopped making sense.  Things became too far out and predictable.  Even though he still was, it felt like Hawke was no longer in the driver’s seat.  There was nothing that he could do to steer the film into the right direction.

I thought that Getaway would at least be a fun ride to get distracted on for a little while.  Instead, I wanted to get off before the ride was over.

I rate this movie a 4 on a scale of 1-10.

Buy, rent, or run?  Run.