The Getaway

Sam Peckinpah's moribund career and shattered artistic reputation were rescued by The Wild Bunch, which put him back on the map partly for his talent as a storyteller, but mostly for its nihilistic, stylized violence. In the early '70s he made two atypically quiet and personal films, The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Junior Bonner, as well as the infamous Straw Dogs, a powerful mediation on violence that cemented Peckinpah as Feminist Public Enemy #1.

The Getaway was the first of several films Peckinpah made expressly for the sake of box-office returns, along with The Killer Elite, Convoy and The Osterman Weekend - all films where Peckinpah was (ostensibly) under studio control, and therefore couldn't give a damn about the quality of the final product. The movie is based on a Jack Thompson novel, with perennial icon of cool Steve McQueen (who had worked with Peckinpah on Junior Bonner) and talentless but attractive Love Story star Ali McGraw. The film was a big hit when released, with many Peckinpah partisans and crime movie fans arguing its virtues, but perhaps due to directorial indifference, it doesn't really hold up: it fails as an action film and is too slight to work as a thriller.

Doc McCoy (Steve McQueen) is a small-time hood who is sprung from jail by crime boss Jack Benyon (Ben Johnson) as part of a convoluted robbery scheme. Doc and his wife Carol (Ali McGraw) will help Benyon's henchmen Rudy (Al Liettieri) and Jackson (Bo Hopkins) hold up a small Texas bank and split the loot afterwards. The bank job is botched, with Jackson killed by his double-crossing partner, while Doc and Carol manage to come away with most of the money. Our two protagonists attempt to flee Rudy, who kidnaps a bewildered small-town couple (Sally Struthers and Jim Dodson) to help him out, Benyon's henchmen, and state troopers, and escape to Mexico with the loot.

Despite claims to the contrary, The Getaway is really more of a poorly-executed Hitchcock-lite suspense thriller than a shoot-'em-up action film, with only a handful of mostly brief action scenes and precious little Peckinpah flair. There are flashes of slow-motion, the pre-requisite squibs, a plethora of talented character actors, and the omni-present children watching violence, but otherwise this movie could be the work of pretty much any Hollywood hack. The movie is really a long chase in pursuit of the money - or would be, if anyone was actually doing the chasing. As it is, the plot is extremely slight, with very little tension or real development. There's the potential for a good film here, but Peckinpah - or at least Peckinpah under studio constraints - is not the man to make it work.

The movie is extremely slight in every department that counts. Our protagonists are unlikeable and little more than pencilled in; they do little more than bitch about their fractious relationship in between the movie's scant action scenes, which bogs down the plot and quickly becomes tiresome. Besides those two, the movie is completely lacking in characters, the movie's villains an afterthought. Treacherous crook Al Liettieri spends too much time with horny Sally Struthers and bewildered Jack Dodson, in unfunny and tedious scenes that hopelessly bog down the film. Ben Johnson's menacing crime boss is dispatched early, and his henchmen hardly figure into the film until the climactic three-way shootout at the hotel.

This might be forgivable if there were any action or entertainment going on, but there's too much driving, bitching and lengthy hotel and dialogue scenes that are as dull as they are long, making the film a chore to sit through. The plot creeps along at snail's pace, with lots of digressions (the lengthy scene with a confidence man (Richard Bright) trying to make off with the loot) and cliches (there are at least half a dozen variations on the old "Convict enters store, store owner hears about convict on the radio, convict slips out in the nick of time" cliche). The movie's final shootout is well-staged but it's hardly Peckinpah's best work, and it's certainly not worthy of the excrutiating build-up. The movie's contrived happy ending strikes a false note and is a lame capper on an already suspect film.

Steve McQueen seems to be simply going through the motions, taciturn and grim but lacking the charisma and star power that made his best performances (The Sand Pebbles, Papillion) so memorable. Ali McGraw is even worse; she's certainly gorgeous but she has no screen presence, and she and McQueen (future husband and wife) have about as much screen chemistry as a pair of wet noodles). Al Liettieri and Sally Struthers are annoying as all get out, though Jack Dodson is hilariously pathetic as Struthers' bewildered husband. The supporting cast consists of fine character actors doing what they do best: Ben Johnson as the Texas crime boss, Slim Pickens as a talkative truck driver, Dub Taylor as a hotel clerk, Roy Jenson and John Bryson as thugs, and Richard Bright in a scene-stealing bit as a conman who tries to swindle our protagonists.

The Getaway is a mostly dull, mediocre effort from Peckinpah that can be easily skipped by anyone not a hardcore fan.

Rating: 5/10 - Mediocre