Review of A Perfect Getaway (2009) by Ht S — 27 Apr 2012

This is a suave little mind-job of a movie, a tongue-in-cheek throwback to slasher thrillers from the 50s and 60s that conforms to its own rules while simultaneously mocking them.

You've got the standard array of characters and suspects, but something is clearly off here, and we don't know quite what. Writer/Director David Twohy does a great job of playing with our expectations while maintaining a coherent narrative, in essence creating a movie that operates on multiple levels and greatly rewards repeated viewings. It presents its mystery in a straightforward, formulaic fashion, inviting the audience to lower its guard while piquing their eyebrows at the inherent strangeness of the dialogue.

About two thirds of the way through the movie there is a fearsome twist that causes the gravity of the situation to shift completely. It's a delightfully surprising, completely absurd reveal, but completely justified. Every single line and action in the movie up until this point can be interpreted in two different ways. But because of the way the movie plays with our perception of the characters, it's almost unforeseeable. I respect the thought that went into the script and the ability of the actors to walk this fragile line. There is a clever subtext here about duality; the duality of want and need, inexperience versus experience, the effects of the choices we make and the people we choose to be. The dialogue is a game of chess where one player keeps switching sides. After the twist, the action culminates in an exciting three-way chase that nicely underlines the personality and motivations of every character involved. Unfortunately, this is also the weakest part of the movie because Twohy gets carried away with silly indulgences like frames-within-frames, jump-cuts and cheesy musical flourishes.

Twohy has a spotty track record when it comes to critical response, but there is a legitimate creative momentum behind all of his movies that makes them very watchable. While the market is awash in pre-packaged, cookie-cutter chunks of toilet-taffy, here is something unexpected and original. Here, a simple but exciting premise is used to pick apart the cliches of our favorite genres, laying them out, asking us what it is about those elements that attracts us to such narrative sleaze, without sullying our enjoyment. I never perceived this as heavy-handed because it strongly augments the pacing of the film. The action plays out on the gorgeous, rain-drenched scenery of the furthest Hawaiian islands. There is a moody sense of isolation permeating every scene. Focusing on only a small handful of characters also adds to the eerie sense of loneliness, and leaves the viewer as suspicious of the characters as the characters are of each other.

A Perfect Getaway is melodramatic schlock, but that's sort of the point. It does what it sets out to do very well, and as a genre-mocking self-satire it certainly performs a lot better than, say, Adaptation or Tropic Thunder, two movies that fail to realize that it isn't funny to mock characters we have no respect for in the first place. Getaway actually earns the right to pull the rug out from under you.