Getaway (W/S) [VHS]

 

 

Create your own review

Steve McQueen stars in this crime thriller as Doc McCoy, a tough guy who pulls off a robbery with his wife Carol. The action is slow and the dialogue is just as slow, but this is a classic movie which enlisted the help of Walter Hill (The Warriors) and has a distinct atmosphere only McQueen can bring to the big screen.

This blu-ray is appalling - only a mono DTS track has been provided, with 192kbps bitrate. Yes, there are other languages and a commentary track, otherwise this is pretty bad. There are subtitles in most of the major languages, which will redeem the disk for some people.

The image quality isn't bad for the age of the movie, but it's not good either, with darker edges on the side of the screen, and it just looking rather dreary, unsaturated, and rather washed out. The bitrate is pretty low too, barely reaching 16Mbits. Pity as this did look pretty promising.

There are few extras with extra parts of the movie, mainly stuff off other reels - great for fans but not really appealing to passers by. There are no documentaries.

A real let down, shame as it's a classic.

For me this is by far his best film. In my opinion it typifies Steve's maverick nature. You know what? I can really imagine him playing this role in real life, if he had to. The man was so magnetic, what we in England call "A man's man." A role model for every wouldbe, wannabe renegade. The kind of guy who only takes what he has to take, and as soon as he's had enough he lets you know. This film is special. Now and then you get a perfect match of director, Sam Peckinpah, with actor, Steve McQueen, and you've got something worth having. Like Ford and Wayne. Capra and Stewart. Added to this is a fine screenplay by Walter Hill from a Jim Thompson novel. This was the movie in which Steve and Ali MacGraw met and fell in love. Ali was the wife of Producer Robert Evans, who surely wouldn't have let Ali do the film had he known that Steve was a teenage idol of hers. Anyway, as Steve had already left his first wife Neile, the inevitable happened and Evans was history. Let me tell you about the machinations within the cast. Sam Peckinpah was, to say the least, a little bit volcanic in temperament, and in Steve I think he found a kindred spirit. The lead baddie, Rudy Butler, played by Al Lettieri (remember him as Salozzo in The Godfather?) A real mean looking S.O.B. Originally Peckinpah wanted Richard Bright to play this part, but Steve objected on the grounds that in real life Bright was the same size as him, and so Bright did not present a perceived physical threat. Bright, however, got a smaller part in the film as the sneak thief who lifts the bag of loot from Ali at the train station. Also in the film were other friends of Peck's - Ben Johnson as Jack Benyon, and Slim Pickens with a fine cameo at the end of the movie. Both of these guys, incidentally, were cowboy/rodeo riders, as was the recently deceased Richard Farnsworth, who reprised Pickens' role in the dreadful Baldwin re-make. (That film was a little like repainting the Mona Lisa with a paint by numbers set). I can highly recommend this film, a real classic. I love one of Steve's opening lines. Carter "Doc" McCoy has been in prison for some time, and his wife Carol, visits him. As the tension is almost tangible he says, "Get to Benyon, tell him I'm for sale. His price. Do it now." Carol somehow gets her wires crossed, sleeps with Benyon, and as Benyon is on the parole board, Doc's parole is amazingly granted. Thing is, Doc only intended for Carole to relay a simple message, without the dessert. When he finds out its enough to make any battered wife feel well treated in comparison!! Enjoy this film. If you're a McQueen fan and you haven't already seen this, you'll love it.

One of the many things that gives 1972's The Getaway the edge over its now almost-forgotten remake is that, unlike Alec Baldwin, Steve McQueen doesn't act like a movie star - he is a movie star. From the days when cool was what you were, not what you wore or owned, the plot itself is nothing special: Steve McQueen's bank robber is sprung from jail to pull a job with wife Ali MacGraw and has to hightail it to Mexico with both the relentless double-crossing Al Lettieri and numerous Texas mobsters in hot pursuit. Like most chase thrillers, you've seen it before: it's what Peckinpah does with it that counts, and Peckinpah does plenty. Most of Peckinpah's usual trademarks can be found in the margins, from children's fascination with violence to the Hellfire and brimstone preacher whose radio sermon goes unheard, and the action scenes are superbly staged - especially the hotel shootout and the lovingly filmed shooting up of a police car - but just as importantly he keeps a clear focus on his characters. The film's emotional terrain is as harsh as the barren landscape the ensuing chase is set against, with the odds on McQueen and MacGraw's marriage making it just as touch-and-go as whether they will make it across the border in one piece, their road to possible marital redemption through ordeal mirrored with the fast-track to Hell that hostage couple Sally Struthers and Jack Dodson take chauffeuring Lettieri's perverse wounded animal on their trail.

It's probably Sam Peckinpah's last truly successful film before self-indulgence, laziness and too much booze and drugs took their toll on his work. True, it's a purely commercial piece that has none of the personal passion that drove The Wild Bunch or The Ballad of Cable Hogue, but it's put together with a level of genuine artistry that's way above the norm for the genre: the editing of the first twenty minutes alone, with its freeze-frames and non-linear structure, is remarkably adventurous and successful. Both perfectly representing the state of mind and frustration and disorientation of McQueen's character in a way that is both complex and yet entirely accessible and transforming what could have been bog-standard exposition into something much more memorable, it's strikingly effective. Far more entertaining than it has any right to be.

(On an incidental note, although Walter Hill claimed that little of his screenplay made it to the screen (the bleak ending of Jim Thompson's novel is replaced by a much sweeter and more optimistic one), it's interesting to note how much of the film he would rework in his own The Driver, from the destruction of a car in a key setpiece to the train sequence with a very (un)lucky bagman.)

Warners' 2.35:1 widescreen DVD is a good transfer, with a brief 'virtual commentary' by Peckinpah and the two stars drawn from radio interviews, a full-length commentary by Peckinpah biographers and the film's strikingly awful original theatrical trailer. The extras are carried over to the region-free Blu ray, which also includes a documentary on composer Jerry Fielding's relationship with Peckinpah, an isolated score track for his unused score (sadly not mixed into the film proper, though the Blu Ray does include the bank robbery sequence with Fielding's score as an extra) and trailers for The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Ride the High Country and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 8 customer reviews on Amazon.co.uk

 

5.0 out of 5 stars The Getaway
Great movie all the way through. I really liked the remake as well so I have them both side by side. Read more

Published 18 months ago by English Bob

5.0 out of 5 stars 1972 Sam Peckinpah classic
This 1972 movie directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Steve McQueen as Doc McCoy and Ali MacGraw as his wife gets played on my dvd player regularly when i get boozed up. Read more

Published on 20 Feb 2009 by Billy Ray Cyrus

4.0 out of 5 stars Poor Transfer for a great movie
This 1972 movie directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Steve McQueen as Doc McCoy and Ali MacGraw as his wife gets played on my dvd player regularly when i get boozed up. Read more

Published on 20 Feb 2009 by Billy Ray Cyrus

4.0 out of 5 stars Pulp Fiction at its most authentic
I'm not so familiar with Sam Peckinpah's career as I have only seen this and The Osterman Weekend (which I hated) but you can tell from his style that he has certainly influenced... Read more

Published on 4 Aug 2007 by Inspector Gadget

5.0 out of 5 stars Get to Benyon. Tell him I'm for sale.
While not Steve McQueen's best film ever, this is still a fantastic movie, and Ali McGraw gives an acceptable performance as his wife. Read more

Published on 4 Dec 2002 by D. M. Tolley

Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

› See all 8 customer reviews on Amazon.co.uk

Search Listmania!