Getaway is the slowest movie about fast cars you'll ever see. It whittles down to a collection of monotonous car chases strung together by a beyond silly plot and poor acting from the two mismatched leading stars.
The film has former professional racer Brent Magna (Ethan Hawke) driving a car because some criminal mastermind (played by Jon Voight, who must have just needed an extra paycheck) is a fan of his. He's kidnapped Brent's wife and forces Brent to steal a Shelby Mustang. Once he's in the car Bent is ordered to pretty much destroy Sofia, Bulgaria or his wife dies.
Along the way, the car's owner (Selena Gomez) gets involved because the mastermind calls her up to tell her that the car had been stolen. She gets called in because the goal of the criminal's plot is to steal dirty money from her father's investment bank. However, the real reason she's called in is to yell and look scared during the car chases. How many times can we get a former Disney star to yell “sh*t” and “hell” in an 82-minute movie? I didn't bother to count.
Getaway was 'directed' by Courtney Solomon, a guy who hasn't directed a movie since 2005's An American Haunting and his only other credit is the 2000 Dungeons & Dragons movie. I put 'directed' in quotes because there's no real direction here. It's just quick cutting, poor editing and a complete lack of understanding of how to handle exposition. The bridging scenes between each car chase are as headache-inducing as the car chases because the constant cutting continues even while Gomez and Hawke are trying to have a conversation.
Essentially, the film boils down to a glossy B-movie that people really should not have to pay to see. Somehow, Voight got conned into making a cameo – his whole face is literally on screen for half a second at the end – and Hawke isn't even trying. Gomez is just downright annoying throughout, but that's probably more of the fault of screenwriters Sean Finegan and Gregg Maxwell Parker who give her great lines like “Look out!” throughout the film.
Warner Bros. has the film set for release on Blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday. The movie looks fine, as any film made in 2013 should. It is presented on a single-layered disc, which isn't an issue since there's less than two hours of content on the disc. The bonus material amounts to five one-minute blips about aspects of the film.
Getaway could probably have been called Car Chase: The Movie, since that's all it is. It's also a commercial for the Shelby Mustang and a travelogue of Sofia, Bulgaria. Skip this one, even when it lands on Netflix and cable.