After the opening scene of the new Courtney Solomon flick "Getaway," I couldn't help but ask myself: What was Ethan Hawke thinking? Did he even read the script? Was there a script? My hunch is by agreeing to do this, Hawke did someone a favor; maybe he owed some big-time gambling debt to Solomon, or perhaps Selena Gomez had some dirt on him.
Regardless, the only saving grace of the movie is that it's just 90 minutes. That's one 90-minute chase scene that resembles a seizure more than a movie. Sometimes the car chases involve other cars, sometimes motorcycles and sometimes guns. Any possible tension created by these chase scenes are instantly counteracted because, well, nothing else happens. Drive. Stop. Go. Turn left. Stop. Go. And so on and so forth. The dialogue between Gomez and Hawke is empty and awkward. The camera angles, transitions and placement remind me of a meth-fueled day-dream. In fact, after 20 minutes the twitchy camera work gave me a headache.
If there is a plot, it's this: Hawke's character comes home to find a trashed apartment, a pool of blood on the floor and his wife missing. A voice played by Jon Voight (the audience is shown only his mouth) calls Hawke and tells him to do exactly what he says, or else he'll kill his wife.
The movie concludes with an absolutely ridiculous plot device that attempts to manipulate the audience. There hasn't been a crash-and-burn duo like this since Barry Pepper and John Travolta in "Battlefield Earth."
I have nothing nice to say about this movie. There's no character development, no arc, nothing to prompt a sympathetic reaction. The only character I actually cared about was the Ford Mustang that Hawke is forced to manhandle. The digital effects seemed like a fifth-grade science project. I'm ashamed to have shelled out $10 to watch this movie, and I'm worried that I've only aided in the further production of movies as nonsensical, shallow and blasphemous as this. Zero stars.
Ben Rader can be reached at benjamin.rader@student.shu.edu
