| 46th | Top film noir: 1990s |
| The Getaway | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster |
|
| Directed by | Roger Donaldson |
| Produced by | David Foster John Alan Simon Lawrence Turman Marilyn Vance |
| Written by | Jim Thompson (novel) Walter Hill Amy Jones |
| Starring | Alec Baldwin Kim Basinger Michael Madsen James Woods Philip Seymour Hoffman Jennifer Tilly |
| Music by | Mark Isham |
| Cinematography | Peter Menzies Jr. |
| Editing by | Conrad Buff |
| Distributed by | Universal Studios |
| Release date(s) | February 11, 1994 |
| Running time | 115 min. |
| Country | U.S. |
| Language | English |
| Gross revenue | $30,057,974 (worldwide)[1] |
The Getaway is a 1994 crime thriller and a remake of the 1972 film of the same name. The film stars Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, Michael Madsen, James Woods, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jennifer Tilly, and was directed by Roger Donaldson.
Contents |
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 Mexican drug lord's son out of jail in order to gain a $300,000 payment. They carry out the job successfully but it turns out the drug lord only wanted his son out to kill him for failing to pay a huge debt. Rudy is waiting outside with the getaway plane but upon seeing police cars start to close in leaves and Doc is left behind and arrested. The next scene moves to a Mexican jail where Doc has spent the last year in prison. His wife visits him and learns that Doc has heard about a mob boss who is looking to put together a select team of experts that can rob a dog track in Arizona. As Doc has a lot of experience he asks his wife to contact the mob boss Jack Benyon in a deal that would see him released from prison if he pulls off the job. The wife meets with the boss who agrees to hire him.
We next see Doc being released from prison and meeting the team he is to rob the dog track with. By chance one of his team is Rudy with who he pulled off the jail break a year ago along with another man called Hansen (Hoffman) who has army experience but is relatively new to the profession and it is probably his first job. They break into the dog track as planned, but while Doc is breaking into the vault a guard tries to pull a gun and is shot by Hansen in a panic much to the dismay of both Rudy and Doc. They escape the dog track by creating a huge diversion with a bomb under a gas truck and successfully leave with the bag of cash. The plan was for Doc and his wife to meet Rudy and Hansen later to split the money. On the way to meet Doc, Rudy kills Hansen and pushes him out of the car in order to have all the money to himself. On arriving at the rendezvous point Doc questions where Hansen is and Rudy pulls a gun to kill Doc also. However Doc, knowing Rudy's character, knew he would do that and is ready with his own weapon and shoots Rudy, but not killing him as Doc thinks he has. Doc and his wife drive off with all the money leaving Rudy for dead, but he was wearing a bullet vest. Rudy manages to drive off wounded, and finds shelter and medical attention at a local vet clinic. There he meets Harold (Stephens) and his wife Fran (Tilly) who treat his wounds and are taken hostage on route to El Paso. Fran is quite taken with Rudy and has sex with him while her husband is tied up in the bathroom of a motel. A distrought Harold commits suicide by hanging himself shortly thereafter. Fran and Rudy continue to race towards El Paso.
Doc and his wife go to the Jack Benyon's house to give him his share of the money where he tells Doc that he only agreed to hire him if his wife slept with him before hand. As Doc is counting the money we see Doc's wife approaching with a gun which Doc cant see. She shoots Benyon much to the shock of Doc. We learn that the agreement she had was to kill Doc instead but she changes her mind and kills Benyon instead. She says she only did it to get him out of prison and she loves him. This causes tension between the pair for until the end of the film. Further attention arises when Doc and Carol almost lose the money at a train station in Flagstaff. Carol is dropped off at the terminal while Doc parks the car. As she puts the bag in a terminal locker she is helped by a con man who switches the locker keys and takes the bag. Carol and Doc prusue the con man through the terminal and Doc manages to chase him onto a train while Carol is left behind at the terminal. Doc recovers the bag and returns to the terminal for Carol.
Their plan is to meet their contact in El Paso to get new passports and I.D's so they can escape to Mexico but Benyon's men also want the money they stole and pursue them to the hotel in El Paso to kill them. Rudy, who gets up from where is shot and also drives off to the hotel as he knew Doc was meeting there. When they get to the hotel they book into the room but Benyon's men and Rudy also arrive for the money and long gun fight follows between Doc, Rudy and the mob bosses men. Eventually Doc managed to kill Rudy and most of the men pursuing him. They escape the hotel and make it to the border of Mexico where they purchase a truck off a stranger and drive off into the sun set.
The film is a criminal road trip movie taking the couple across the American southwest. Locations in the script include Phoenix and Flagstaff, Arizona, New Mexico, and border town El Paso, Texas. Standing in for these communities, the film was actually shot in Tucson, 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 the Hotel Del Sol (formerly Hotel Del Ming) in Yuma, Arizona.
This film is a remake of Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway. 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 Peckinpah's version; the 'El Rey' ending from the novel was not included in this film.
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
