If you took the movie Speed, The Transporter, and add just a little dash of any of the Fast and Furious films, but then took out any and all elements that make those movies good, you’d have Getaway, directed by Courtney Solomon, whose only real credit is directing 2000’s Dungeons & Dragons. After seeing Getaway, I hope this is his last directing credit.
The movie follows Brent Magna (Ethan Hawke), who comes home one day to find his wife has been kidnapped. Soon after a phone call lets him know how to get her back, he must do everything he’s told no matter what, or they will kill his wife. He steals a Shelby Mustang Super Snake and must follow every order, no matter how crazy, from the evil man on the other end (Jon Voight). After a car-jacking gone wrong, Brent soon finds himself stuck with an anonymous, computer-savvy girl known only as The Kid (Selena Gomez). Thus, the two must now reluctantly work together to get out of this bad situation alive.
This movie is terrible from the moment it starts. Nothing is new or fresh. It’s a bunch of other better movies put together in a bad Frankenstein fashion, hoping you won’t notice how awful it is. The movie moves from one stagnate scene to the next, doing the same thing over and over again. Jon Voight’s character keeps having Ethan Hawke drive from one populated area to the next, causing havoc and destruction, then having him get away from the police. No joke, this happened four times in a span of 30 mins. It’s like playing a video game, where you just keep doing the same repetitive mission over and over again.
But once The Kid, Disney’s Selena Gomez, enters the movie, it gets even worse! She attempts to carjack Hawke, trying her best to look and sound hard. She can’t do this, no matter how many thug-type flare things they give her. Her mean hoodie and turning her gun to the side, like all good gangbangers, comes off as threatening as an angry Bronie at a comic con when they run out of the Twilight Sparkle toys. She is just appalling as an actress here. It amazes me she has had the career she has.
Just because you can memorize lines and say them doesn’t mean you know what you’re saying. She keeps regurgitating the same lines over and over, but with no substance or understanding. She has a huge a young fan base who will surly go and see this. Keeping the movie at a PG-13 was probably for the best so it can at least make a little money from the tweens that don’t know any better. It’s a shame that her young fans will see her at her worst. The director should have really helped to make her better. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg with things the director is at fault for.
Gomez’s character is nothing more than someone to give answers to Hawke’s character. There is more to how and why her character gets into the movie, but at the time it happens, you don’t care or want to know. She just happens to know all the things Hawke needs to know, where to go, and how to do every single computer thing one could possibility need to know, all while staying in the passenger seat, driving at 100 MPH, or hanging out of the window. I know that Apple has some really good products and that the iPad is probably really good at doing things, but I was unaware that the iPad could hack into government facilities, knockdown firewalls into locked security files, and even change camera footage. It might be able to, but for them to happen in this movie without any backup as to how is really unbelievable.
The movie is all car chases and cars blowing up, which sometimes can be all you need to get through a bad flick, but even the car scenes are uninspired and lazy. It was like they got onto set and no one’s ever seen a car chase before, and they just made it up as they went along. There are no cool car effects, nothing jumps unbelievably at any point. It’s just cars literality chasing each other up and down stairs, through out-door malls, smashing though everything, and even going on an ice-rink. At one point they do a shot where it reminds you of when Scooby Doo and the gang are being chased through doorways. You know the shot I’m talking about, looking down the hallway where the gang comes in and out of doors while being chased by the ghost. They basically did a shot like that in the movie, that’s not good. Even film student are shaking their heads in shock and shame.
This is a dreadful movie, and everyone involved with its making should be ashamed. There’s nothing positive to say and everyone should stay away from this. It shows just how uncreative one director can be. But let’s be honest, if you even heard of this or saw the trailer, you already knew to stay away. No exaggeration, by the 20-minute mark, people were walking out of the screening. We at least gave it a good hour before we walked out. Yeah, Movie Issues walked out. This was that abysmal, we couldn’t take anymore. Do yourself a favor and forget you heard of this, your life will be better for it.