The Getaway (1994 film)

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The Getaway

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Roger Donaldson
Produced by David Foster
John Alan Simon
Lawrence Turman
Written by Jim Thompson (novel)
Walter Hill
Starring Alec Baldwin
Kim Basinger
Music by Mark Isham
Cinematography Peter Menzies Jr.
Editing by Conrad Buff IV
Distributed by Universal Pictures (USA)
Release date(s) 1994
Running time 115 min.
Country U.S.
Language English
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

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. The movie was directed by Roger Donaldson, who also directed The Recruit, Thirteen Days, Dante's Peak & Species.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

Married couple Doc (Baldwin) and Carol (Basinger) McCoy drink beer and shoot at empty tin cans in the desert. Carol tries out several handguns and decides she prefers the bigger .45 caliber autoloader. Rudy (Madsen) 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). The job turns out to be a doublecross, however, and for the remainder of the film, the McCoys are on the run from the mob boss who got McCoy out of jail, Travis, and the law.

This film is a remake of The Getaway (1972 film). Some character names and locations are changed. The writers and producers did not make this version of the film more faithful to Jim Thompson's novel than Sam Peckinpah's 1972 version; the 'El Rey' ending from the novel was not included in this film.

[edit] Selected cast

[edit] Filming locations

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 Río, Sonora, Mexico. The location portrayed as the Border Hotel in El Paso is believed to be in Yuma, Arizona.

[edit] Rating and content

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. 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.

[edit] Continuity errors

  • In the scene at the riverbed, when Doc McCoy removes the magazine from his 1911, the slide is locked back. When the view shifts to another angle, the slide is forward.
  • 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 similar shotguns to the one used have both a pump-action and semiauto 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] Trivia

  • The gun that Doc uses appears to be an earlier version of the Benelli M4 Super 90 or a regular Benelli M4, which is believed by the U.S. military to have excellent close-range combat capabilities
  • Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger were married at the time this film was made. Their predecessors, Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, became romantically involved during the making of the original, and were also married soon after.

[edit] External links