The Getaway

Rating:
Summary: Doc and his wife have many enemies, including each other?
Review: The Getaway is a slick, fast paced action film with, great acting, and a supurb script. Their is not a weak performance in the film despite the fact that many people seem to hate Ali Mcgraw. My theory is that these people are ugly losers who resent Mcgraw because she is more attractive than they can ever hope to be. She is not a great actress but she does a good job in this movie, her character is understated, quiet, but strong, forgiving and dependable. Without her Doc (McQueen's character) would not have survived or even gotten out of jail in ther first place. McQueen does a masterful job of portraying Doc, a smooth, cool, (sometimes ice cold) soft spoken tough guy. He may seem mild, but push his puttons once to often and you better start ducking because the bullets will be humming. Doc will shoot you dead without a second thought if he has to. His wife can shoot as well as drive and she too will kill if necessary. The music in this movie is great, especially the twanging music that starts whenever a violent confrontation occures. The story begins with Doc (McQueen) in prison. The monontanty of his days drive him crazy, he is made to tear up tree stumps all day long. Even though this film does not focus that much on it is clear how much prison sucks in the few short scenes in which Doc is imprisoned. He comes up for parole and is denied. Desperate to get out of prison he swallows his pride and sends his wife to Benion, the local political power broker/gangster/rancher/ all around rich scumbag. In order to get Doc out of jail Mcgraw (I forget her character's name) is forced to sleep with Benion. On top of that once Doc gets out Benion requires him to pull a bank heist for him. Benion already has the bank selected because he has inside information on when a lot of money will be coming in, his brother-in-law sits on the board of the bank, and Benion has already assembled a team for Doc to lead. The actor who plays Benion does a great job of being really sleazy in a political way, arrogant and condecining. Rudy and Frank are the names of the characters Benion has selected to work for Doc. Doc does not trust these people for good reason, the guy who plays Rudy played Solotzo in the Godfather and man is he GREAT!!! in this movie. He steals the show and in my opinion out performs McQueen. Dont get me wrong, McQeen gives a great performance but the guy who plays Rudy (Silversti?) is a menacing villian who exudes subtle threats throughout the film. He is also clever and funny but ruthless and viscious. Doc and his wife soon realize that they are surrounded by enemies, who they have no choice but to cooperate with now but who will likely betray them at the first oppurtunity. No one trusts each other on this job, Benion does not trust Doc and his wife and vice versa, Rudy does not trust anyone and no one in their right minds trusts Rudy. These people are all criminals but Doc and his wife are by far the most likeable and least scummy. This bizzare group of individuals are compelled by circumstance to cooperate but after the job is over, all bets are off!!! The job goes bad and betryal followes betryal, Doc discovers his wife's "infiedility" and is enraged even though he sent her to Benion and she only did what she had to get him out of prison. Doc and his wife end up with the money but with Rudy and Benion's boys on their trail. Not to mention the cops who have thrown out a state wide search for Doc, his wife, and everyone else involved with robbery gone wrong. It is now a race to the border with Doc and his wife playing the hare for the cops, Rudy, and Benion's thugs. Across the border lies freedom and the good life beyond the reach of the American authorities. However, Doc and his wife are starting to distrust each other, their relationship is falling apart, deterioting more and more the closer they get to actually escaping. The viewer really gets invested in Doc and his wife and roots for them to hold it together and trust each other. The viewer really wants to see them get away with the money, the villians in this film are delicioulsy sinister, watching them die is truly a pleasure and a relief. People die horribly in this movie, the violence is realistic without being overdone. Plenty of shooting and shoot outs with lots of death, car chases, narrow escapes, and constant tension. This movie is very metaphorical in the sense that viewers will really relate to Doc and his wife. Who does not want to get away from the dreary life of a wage slave, who does not feel that they only person they can trust is themselves, even though they badly want to trust their spouse, in this movie it is man and wife against the world. Who does not feel sometimes that they are surrounded by evil people intent on their destruction, and that the only solution is to destroy these other people first. Doc and his wife's odysessy to escape America and long arm of the law, not to mention their previous "partners" in crime represents a fantasy many people have of escaping the prison of their lives. The real problem is that they are starting not to trust each other, and if anything is going to get them killed its that. The suspense climaxes in a great shoot out in a sleazy border motel where all acounts are settleed once and for all and Doc and his wife found out wheater or not they can truly trust each other. This movie proves the old adage that the robbery is the easy part of the crime, the true test of a criminal is the Getaway.

Rating:
Summary: The Original...The Best
Review: A film deserving of its place on the ESSENTIAL VIDEO list. This classic Steve McQueen action/drama is far superior to the newer remake staring Alec Baldwin. A perfect blend of romance and action (Heavy on the action) make this film a classic that will never die. I highly recommend this DVD, and give it five big stars!

Rating:
Summary: Steve and Ali are a winner!
Review: I love this movie, despite all the graphic bloodshed. I don't know why people are always trying to remake Steve McQueen films. All they ever do is fail miserably. This is one if his best; an adventurous, exciting movie, plus a love story, all in one. Steve and Ali are Doc and Carol McCoy, a couple on the run. They're racing from Texas to the Mexican border with money stolen in a bank robbery, after having been double-crossed by their partners in the heist. I highly recommend this one. Always a thrill. Watch for Sally Struthers as Fran, who's also part of the chase. She's with Rudy, who's out for revenge on Doc and Carol. Music by Quincy Jones. Stay away from the remake, and go with this one!

Rating:
Summary: Is It Proper to Classify A Heist Moovy A Masterpiece...?
Review: ....subtitled "Ain't No Starbucks in These Here Parts of Texas"

....subsubtitled "When Ali Talks of 'Leavin' this Dump', She's Speaking Literally.

This film is so Texas smoky and dusty and brown Stetson-y that you can feel the gritty, sweaty heat on the back of your neck. It has every thing going for it, including stellar direction by Peckinpah and acting by Machismo McQueen...simply, a great thing for us McQueen Obsessives... Some random observations: Ali converts from a Vogue fashion model to a wet-haired trailer trash (and refuse type trash) babe. Struthers adds to the series of double dealings and underhandedness by falling for the BAD badguy right in front of her addled hubband (she tells the hotel keeper that the kitten's name is "poor little Harold", in memory--sarcastically--of her husband). McQueen tells his wife to "punch it" whenever they have to take off from some roadside drive in or dive in by pump-shotgun fire. Ali gets duped by an oily Texan good samaritan who takes off with the stash, but that's okay, Doc gets it back. The boss's brother and posse rides (six Stetsons to the sky) into town in a long Caddy L-Dog top down ragtop--the only thing missing on this ride are the longhorns on the hood. Tawlk about Texas gangsters!??! And after a Peckinpahian shoot out at a godforsakened Texas transient hotel (You know the kind, like the ones you can just about smell the rancid gin and urine oozing thru the plaster cracks), Slim Pickens shows up to save the day. And they all head for the border, just like in "The Wild Bunch" (in fact, doesn't the same trigger happy dude wind up in both films?).

And McQueen barely breaks out in a sweat. Well, so I exaggerate a lil. Anyhoo, find out what the heck I'm talking about by re-seeing this film. You, too, will agree that it certainly qualifies as a masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Pure Addiction
Review: I have been watching this movie since I was 13 over and over again. I am 40 as of this writing.

The story behind "The Getaway" involves Steve McQueen as a convict just released from jail who immediatley gets recruited by who I would describe as the "Southern Texas Mafia" to pull a bank robbery in a sleepy Texas town. The proceeds from the robbery would then get split amongst those who helped to pull the job and the orchestrators behind it. Of course, the robbery goes haywire, and some innocent customers and robbery participants are shot and killed. Steve McQueen and wife portrayed by Ali McGraw (who actually participates in the robbery by driving one of the getaway cars) end up with all the money. However, one of the fellow bank robbers who survived the botched hold up played by Al Letteri (Sollazo in the Godfather)is determnied to find McQueen and get his share of the money if not all of it even if it means killing him and his wife.

Why is it that I love this movie so much and watch it over and over ? Is it the CLASSIC gritty and tough guy performace by Mr McQueen, the slow motion and violent shootouts, the beautiful Ali McGraw who can drive a car and handle a .38 snubnose like a pro that appeals to my male hormones ?

Is it the serious Quincy Jones soundtrack complete with juice harp solos that i just cant get enough off ?

Is it seeing actors like Sally Struthers portray a sex starved housewife in this movie who runs off with one of the bankrobbers and makes husband Jack Dodson (Howard Spague from the Andy Griffith show) suffer humilation ?

Is it some of the classic primitive dialouge in the movie that is hilarious yet insulting ? For example, Sally Struthers: "Have you seen Rudy ? Bank robber: " No you dumb broad" Cut to next scene.

is it Slim Pickens ?

Im not sure, but AMC would not rerun this film over and over again if it was not classic entertainment. Nor would there be a remake of the file 10 years later (...). Dont take it from me though. watch it for yourself and you be the judge.

One note: To this day I am surprised this flick received a PG rating. There are some pretty violent (bloody) scenes in it.

Rating:
Summary: El Rey?
Review: This is an adaption of Jim Thompson's novel "The Getaway". In the book Doc and Carol are trying to get down to Mexico where a man called El Rey has a criminal sanctuary lying in a small coastal group of mountains... El Rey's kingdom is no utopia however. There is nothing but the best to be had and it all cost plenty. When your money runs out so does your luck you are taken to a little village to starve to death. It is a place of cross and double cross as people try to make their money stretch further. It's a waking nightmare for Doc and Carol. The movie leaves all of this out which takes the movie from the action morality tale the book is to just an action film. McQueen makes an excellent choice for Doc however, and except for the omission of the El Rey sequence and a few other parts of the book this is not a bad adaption.

Rating:
Summary: He didn't make it, neither did the film.
Review: I waited over a year to see this film, it wasn't worth it. I wasn't aloud to see it because it was supposedly too violent. When I did see it I was really disppointed. There was very little violence at all, and what there was went too fast. In the final shootout at the end (which I thought would be a huge, explosive borderline massacre by the police) was a poorly choreographed hotel gunfight. Steve McQueen could have done better. Peace out.

Rating:
Summary: The Bonnie and Clyde who weren't.
Review: THE GETAWAY is a movie about the Bonnie and Clyde who weren't. Yet, it has more depth in the public enemy characters played by McGraw and McQueen. I could have the mood to watch this movie once a week. It is exciting like a maelstrom that sucks you into the story!! The story is incredibly spliced together by director Peckinah. Through an awful quest --the getaway-- Peckinpah managed to attach a great deal of humor to the roles of Mc Graw and Mc Queen. I've never held a brief for Struthers, but she did a dandy job of playing a veterinarian's fickle, remarkably stupid and hysterical wife. Not only was the movie exciting, but extremely intense. You have to judge whether Mc Queen and Mc Graw are going to split over her infidelity. You have to hold your breath until you determine whether Mc Queen will first elude police in hot pursuit, the elude his ex-partner, and finally elude the Texas politico-mobsters. That's why I've got the mood to watch this blitz-action movie once a week--to see if McGraw and McQueen can do it again.

Rating:
Summary: Painful
Review: Steve McQueen, the classic misogynist, stars as the main character, "Doc", in this really bad movie. I would speak of plot, but there really isn't one. McQueen abuses his wife in the movie all of the time and she still stays with him. Maybe because he sucessfully robbed a bank. And Sally Struthers? Don't even go there. If she annoyed you in "All in the Family" she will drive you completely insane. Then there's Rudy, the classic character actor villian. He doesn't shoot McQueen, though, so you won't find yourself rooting for him. Or "Doc".

Rating:
Summary: Still a Great Getaway
Review: I was pleasantly surprised at how will this film stands-up. It's perhaps even more enjoyable today than it was back in 1972. Next to recent action flicks, Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway is a positively refreshing breath of fresh air. The 1994 re-make with Alec Baldwin and Kim Bassinger (directed by Roger Donaldson)has steamier sex and a little more action, but it lacks the suspense, authenticity, attention to detail and stylistic flair that Peckinpah brings to his film.

This 1972 film at first seems almost leisurely paced. when you put it against recent slam-bang over the type action films. It's not, it's just not as hyped up or phony as most action films tend to be these days. This is a neo-noir chase film. It's about details and character. You get a sense of place from the film, you feel like you are watching characters that have a basis in reality, not in film. There are sleazy characters, but they are portrayed neither as brilliant geniuses, nor as psycho killers, but as villains who aren't too bright, and have a dogged determination to get their work done. . . hopefully having a little fun in the process. The rather spare action sequences are set up with important details and there isn't an overabundance of pyrotechnics or of cartoonish exaggeration It's downright refreshing today to see a film like this. I even appreciated Quincy Jones soundtrack which employs a wide variety of sounds, instruments and styles to help keep things interesting.

Now this film has a big-time movie STAR as its central character, not just any STAR though, but the quintessential anti-hero movie star. The man who moved like a panther, and had a strong solid presence which never needed to be sold to us. Few had Steve McQueen's intense macho charisma (it was Bogart re-invented) . McQueen didn't need to earn his charisma, he exuded it. A few determined looks and you knew you were dealing with a guy who played things by his own rules. Women were turned on by his sex appeal, most men wouldn't have minded being McQueen. Never mind his private life, on-screen McQueen towered above all the Bronsons, and Eastwoods around him. He was a better actor too.

He was a good actor for Sam Peckinpah to work with. They made two films together (Junior Bonner and The Getaway) and both are quite good. Sam, like McQueen also did things his way. Peckinpah drove studio executives crazy, was a difficult person for anyone to deal with but had a unique genius vision of how films should be made and fought hard to be able to make them his way. For a while he won the battles against the studio executives and then ultimately he lost and drank too much and turned out a few less than stellar films. His masterpiece is The Wild Bunch- and that film is so good on so many different levels it deserves to be right next to the finest masterpieces of film ever made.

The Getaway isn't a masterpiece. For one thing it's got a huge weight around it's neck. That weight is named Ali McGraw. Sure, during the filming of The Getaway, McQueen and McGraw became a huge ITEM which led to a torrid long lasting very mercurial relationship off-screen-but none of their real life heat is evident in the film. Ali McGraw can not act. She's not completely wooden, but she's never convincing in any scene where she is expected to emote. Peckinpah picked her to be an ice princess, but she never convinces us she's very tough or particularly icy. The closest she comes is somewhat detached -- as in somewhat lost.

Her part is not unique enough that the film needs her to be great actress, and so the film is not done in by her. Indeed, there's too many good things about the film for that to happen.

Walter Hill( who would later direct 48 hours, The Warriors, The Driver, Long Riders, etc) wrote an excellent adaptation of Jim Thompson's novel for Peckinpah to direct. Since not one of the principal characters in the film are good or decent people, we are dealing with a film about crooks. Low life crooks, middle of the road crooks and rich crooks with political influence and power. Peckinpah casts this world perfectly (with the exception of Ali McGraw).

Most memorable is the garbage truck sequence late in the film. My favorite is the scene with Slim Pickens.

The Getaway is an excellent film despite it's McGraw flaw because of the way Peckinpah, Hill, and McQueen approach the material. It's more character and detail based than action/chase films usually are, but does deliver enough of what the people want to be thoroughly entertaining.