This week's entry in the Deep Hurting Project is the 2013 film Getaway. No, not the one with Steve McQueen, this is a different film. A much stupider one.
The first thing I notice is that, off the bat, the cinematography is all over the place, switching between fairly normal looking to grainy black and white to footage recorded on a dashcam. This is pretty jarring in a way that I'm fairly certain the filmmakers did not intend. This may be a good reminder that this time around, all the driving is real. So many cars were wrecked in the making of this film that they had to make their own junkyard just to store all the wreckage.
That said, let's talk about the story. It's really fast-paced (according to the IMDB, there are a total of 6150 edits in the film, in contrast to a normal 90-minute film's 1600. This averages out to an average shot length of 0.878 seconds or about 21 FRAMES) and I strongly suspect that the reason is to distract from how stupid the film is. It's basically like Crank, except that, while those film embrace the complete insanity of the premise, this film just feels like it's trying to play it straight, even as the evil mastermind, played by Jon Voight, has a voice like a cross between Henry Kissinger and Elmer Fudd, and even when he asks Ethan Hawke to drive the car down a set of steps, it all just seems totally stupid, but not in a fun kind of way. The film is far too fast-paced, and, while it has a lot of action, they devote almost no time to actually developing the characters. Even when they're in between missions, they don't explain anything about the characters. Ethan Hawke's a professional driver whose wife has been kidnapped. Selena Gomez is a super hacker who just happens to own the car being used (and doesn't mention it until late in the film for some reason). Jon Voight is taking an extremely overcomplicated stupid method just so he can rob a bank. And he roughs Ethan's wife up for no good reason. Barring the characters listed as "Henchman" or "Driver" or "Valet", there are exactly seven characters of note. Not one could pass the Plinkett Test. And most of them barely even appear in the film. Seriously, "Shut Up and Dance" could make it work and create well-realised characters, and it was 38 minutes shorter than this film. The fuck is wrong with this film?
And now for the only proper response to this film:
The first thing I notice is that, off the bat, the cinematography is all over the place, switching between fairly normal looking to grainy black and white to footage recorded on a dashcam. This is pretty jarring in a way that I'm fairly certain the filmmakers did not intend. This may be a good reminder that this time around, all the driving is real. So many cars were wrecked in the making of this film that they had to make their own junkyard just to store all the wreckage.
That said, let's talk about the story. It's really fast-paced (according to the IMDB, there are a total of 6150 edits in the film, in contrast to a normal 90-minute film's 1600. This averages out to an average shot length of 0.878 seconds or about 21 FRAMES) and I strongly suspect that the reason is to distract from how stupid the film is. It's basically like Crank, except that, while those film embrace the complete insanity of the premise, this film just feels like it's trying to play it straight, even as the evil mastermind, played by Jon Voight, has a voice like a cross between Henry Kissinger and Elmer Fudd, and even when he asks Ethan Hawke to drive the car down a set of steps, it all just seems totally stupid, but not in a fun kind of way. The film is far too fast-paced, and, while it has a lot of action, they devote almost no time to actually developing the characters. Even when they're in between missions, they don't explain anything about the characters. Ethan Hawke's a professional driver whose wife has been kidnapped. Selena Gomez is a super hacker who just happens to own the car being used (and doesn't mention it until late in the film for some reason). Jon Voight is taking an extremely overcomplicated stupid method just so he can rob a bank. And he roughs Ethan's wife up for no good reason. Barring the characters listed as "Henchman" or "Driver" or "Valet", there are exactly seven characters of note. Not one could pass the Plinkett Test. And most of them barely even appear in the film. Seriously, "Shut Up and Dance" could make it work and create well-realised characters, and it was 38 minutes shorter than this film. The fuck is wrong with this film?
And now for the only proper response to this film:
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.