The Getaway (1994 film)

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The Getaway is a 1994 remake of the 1972 film starring Steve McQueen. The movie stars Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, Michael Madsen, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jennifer Tilly and James Woods. And the movie was directed by Roger Donaldson, who also directed The Recruit, Thirteen Days, Dante's Peak & Species.

The film opens with Baldwin and Basinger's characters drinking beer and shooting at empty food cans in the desert. The two play Doc and Carol McCoy, a married couple. Carol is trying out several different handguns and decides she prefers to shoot a .45 caliber autoloader. A smaller caliber gun is too small, she says. Madsen's character, Rudy, arrives on a motorcycle and proposes the three break a fourth person out of jail in order to gain a $300,000 payment, (which the three would ostensibly split between them).

Speaking about how fans view her during a television interview, Basinger once said, "You can never really know [entirely] who someone else is." While Basinger is unknown, some aspects of her character, Carol, are evident in the film. In the portrayal of Doc and Carol McCoy, the female character is shown as somewhat reliant or dependent on the male. She is intelligent, can live alone, thinks for herself, and acts independently. Often, she defers decisions to the male character, Doc.

The film is a criminal road trip movie taking the couple across the American southwest. Locations in the script include Phoenix, Flagstaff, Arizona, New Mexico and border town El Paso, Texas. Standing in for these communities, the film was actually shot in Yuma, Phoenix, and Prescott, Arizona. An exterior, establishing shot for one scene is believed to have been filmed in San Luis del Rio, Sonora, Mexico. The location portrayed as the Border Hotel in El Paso is believed to be in Yuma, Arizona.

A few details are given away but only hints at the plot are included below. For example, this article reveals the name of one character who makes it to the last minutes of the film. It also reveals the general nature of a few scenes but not the final outcome state of the film.

A well-known scene in the film involves Doc and Carol jumping into a refuse dumpster. There is a visual shock at seeing two prominent and usually well-groomed U.S. movie actors in the trash covered with decomposing garbage.

The filmmakers capture on film the color, vastness, and terrain of the American southwest. There must be thousands of non-franchised, one-of-a-kind motels across the U.S. and the feel of these inexpensive roadside stops is accurately portrayed. Locations chosen for the film were ideal -- visually and for their character. The plot is curvy, the audience's understanding of the characters develops steadily through the piece, and the film is technically sturdy with solid continuity. A wide variety of automobiles and two general aviation aircraft are present in the film.

The events taking place at the dog track scene would seem improbable in real life. The logistics for such an event would be very difficult. Even accounting for the way news amplifies this type of event, the technical expertise for the events depicted seldom occur in the real world. It is far-fetched that a patchwork group of persons could do what was shown in the film.

The VHS copy of the film seen for this article was unrated. A nearly identical R-rated version with some scenes shortened is also available. An edited version has been run on U.S. broadcast television. Profanity is present throughout the unrated cut. Alcohol use is present throughout the film. Criminal activity and violence are present throughout the film. Theft is portrayed as part of a normal life. There are several nude scenes depicting a couple having sex. Throughout the film, guns are handled unsafely. For example, in one scene a loaded revolver is put into a character's mouth and the hammer is cocked. At least ten characters suffer traumatic gunshot wounds in the film. Because of the extensive action, many more in the screenplay may have been shot but the fast camera movements and action make it impossible to tally them all. There are several collisions. At least one roll-over auto accident, due to mechanism of injury, would probably be fatal to the vehicle occupant(s) if it occurred in real life. The film does show there are consequences, (in some cases), for criminal behavior.

It almost seemed that time ran out in editing the final cut of the film. The only technically questionable things that occurred were in the last ten minutes of the film.

The gun that Doc uses appears to be an earlier version of the Benelli M4 Super 90 or a REGULAR BENELLI M4... which has been known by the U.S. military to have excellent up close combat capabilities

[edit] Continuity Errors & Flubs

In an early scene at the Border Hotel, a character puts the barrel of a loaded revolver into hotelier Gollie's mouth and cocks the hammer of the revolver. After a cut four seconds later, the hammer is no longer cocked.
In a scene during the last fifteen minutes of the movie, Doc McCoy carries a pump shotgun and gets into an exchange of gunfire. At one point he has to fire at someone in a building hallway. He rapidly fires three rounds in succession, (boom-boom-boom) without pumping a round into the chamber of the shotgun. However some similair shotguns to the one used have BOTH a pum ACTION and SEMI AUTO action...the pump may be used in case of a jam from the semi auto fire as well
In the last two minutes of the film, Doc McCoy (Baldwin) says to the driver, "pull over up here." The acoustics are wrong for inside of a vehicle and the sound is like it was recorded in a looping session with the actor too far from the microphone.
Elevators that move up and down the hoistway on a cable are called overhead traction elevators. Since the early 1900s, elevators have had safety devices that prevent the elevator car from plummeting down the hoistway if the cable breaks.
The wrong starter sound is used for the Forest-Service-green, Club-Cab Dodge pickup seen in the last ten minutes of the film. 1960s Dodge starter motors have a unique sound.
This version of the film was given an R rating in theaters and later unrated on home video. The original was rated PG and later re-rated R.

[edit] Cast

This is a partial list of the cast members: Doc McCoy (Alec Baldwin) Carol McCoy (Kim Basinger) Rudy Travis (Michael Madsen) Jack Benyon (James Woods) Jim Deer Jackson (David Morse) Fran Carvey (Jennifer Tilly) Harold Carvey, DVM (James Stephens) Slim (Richard Farnsworth) Frank Hansen (Philip Seymour Hoffman) Gollie (Burton Gilliam)