Review: A Perfect Getaway
August 11, 2009 by admin
Filed under Movie News
An unwritten rule of film is that movies are either made or broken by their twists. If you really want to get down and dirty, M. Night Shyamalan’s career is a good example of this (two were fine, the rest were all atrocious). There are times when a film doesn’t need a twist in order to sustain its greatness. Sometimes, a bad twist will destroy and otherwise great and engaging film. Finally, we have movies that are elevated to greatness because their twist is so suspenseful and earth-shattering. A Perfect Getaway falls into another category altogether, that of a lame twist in an already boring and stupid film.
It’s quite alarming how terrible this movie is, yet in the interest of fairness let’s focus on the few positives first. Leading the pack is Timothy Olyphant who is clearly collecting a paycheck of fun. It’s unclear what writer, director, and torture master David Twohy’s intent for the character Nick was, but Olyphant is relaxed and not as uptight as he was in Live Free or Die Hard. His results here make him the most entertaining character of the bunch as he makes the most of an outlandishly thin character. He’s working in cahoots with a cinematographer who also wants to turn in good work despite everything else working against them. If this film does anything good it’s showing off what the RED Camera can do. Mark Plummer has pulled off some gorgeously detailed shots that capture the sexy geography of Hawaii. Every small detail on the trees and mountains is caught with precision. In addition, non-geographical shots such as the stitching on the bags – crystal clear – are a testament to what these cameras are capable of.
But unfortunately, this isn’t a movie showing of gorgeous postcard shots; rather, one that attempts to be a suspense/horror film. There’s just that small problem when a suspense film is so boring for its entire runtime. Sure, the movie starts off pretty decent but it doesn’t build up to anything, exciting or not. There’s a murderer on the loose but don’t bother to say why we should be afraid of him, her, them. Twohy expects to engage the audience by throwing different suspects at us in the most obvious ways. He also falls back on jump scares to move the action but forgets that all the great ones have a build up preceding. In addition, it’s tough to get invested in characters that are the equivalent of cinematic dry bones. Outside of Nick, none of the characters are worth getting involved with. When the big, obvious “twist” finally arrives, the picture finally expects us to care. Up to this point, Twohy has bored the audience to death but now wants us to be engaged, an hour and twenty minutes into the film. Apparently he forgot the other unwritten rule, that twists are only good if the characters are engaging.
Then again, the rest of the cast isn’t really doing anything to help the cause. A once decent actress, Milla Jovovich might be at her absolute worst here. She overdoes all of her lines whether she’s playing cutesy or the standard Super-Bad-Ass-Female-Woman her hack of a fiancée painted her as. Kiele Sanchez is worse, serving quite possibly the worst southern accent ever. Thankfully she doesn’t need to go undercover with the accent, or else she might not be with us much longer. Steve Zahn might be the least offensive person of the this bunch, but he never exactly reaches the entertainment level of Olyphant. It’d be lovely to mention Chris Hemsworth and Marley Shelton playing a couple who seemingly just escaped from some prison island nearby, but it’s still puzzling why they were here in the first place. Now granted, it’s not completely any one of their faults as Twohy’s excuse of a script doesn’t give any of them much to work with. His abilities (or lack thereof) as a director shine through as all of these actors (Olyphant included) operate on completely different plateaus. Is this an actors’ movie? No, but why should we not expect them to try?
A Perfect Getaway might be B-Movie material, but those are generally entertaining. This film doesn’t even come close to that as it lacks the suspense, the tension needed to make these type of films work. Maybe it’s fitting Cliff (Zahn) and Nick have a conversation about screenplays (as that’s Cliff’s profession). In said dialogue, one of the characters refers to Hollywood making “the next crapola.” No truer words are ever spoken in this film, and at least Twohy knows what he’s making.
