Getaway (2013)

On paper some movies sound better than the final product. Getaway is a great example of that. When brainstorming about the movie the team behind it had some great ideas. They must have thought about how much audiences love car chases and that a whole movie almost completely consisting of them is a lot better than only having a couple. Then they remembered how cool the car was that Nicolas Cage used in Gone in Sixty Seconds, so they decided that would be the ride to star in this movie.

Since you can’t have a movie about a car being chased some people and an actual story is also needed, so they looked in the big book of Hollywood cliches and found some amazing ideas there. Just like in Taken someone is being kidnapped (in this case a wife) and a former racedriver (because they know how to drive cars really fast) should be the husband doing everything to save her. Of course this can not be all because only worrying about his wife is not enough. There also needs to be some drama in the car, so adding a teenager in the car is a great idea since teenagers can be dramatic about anything. String it all together and that’s the concept of your movie done.

If Selena Gomez was trying to come across as a annoying, smartass teenager then she gives a great performance here. During chases her character is constantly yelling to go faster, to watch out and annoy the hell out of Ethan Hawke’s character. Oh yeah, and the audience as well. Her character can also see in 2 seconds, using her iPad, that the camera feed is sent through government servers and where it is ending up. Going into a powerstation she instantly knows how to hack into the system and more ridiculous stuff like that.

Hawke’s character only has one thing to do, which is drive fast and look desperate the whole time. The story itself (the little there is of it) also is full of moments that just feel out of place or don’t make sense. There is a moment where cops are looking for the car Hawke is driving in a dark alley. Where would you look for a car? According to the cops in this movie anything but the road. Later when a city wide power outage is caused, the streetlights and those in stores are still on. I could keep going. You could probably turn this movie into a game of “spot the ridiculous things” and see who would get the highest score. It would probably be the source of more enjoyment than actually just watching the movie.