The Getaway [Blu-ray] [1972][Region Free]

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.

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.

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. It is essentially the tale of a recently-sprung convict who must perform a bank robbery to pay back a character named Beynon who has pulled strings to spring him from prison. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong in this perfect robbery so we have this genre film that never slows up.

The film (penned by Walter Hill), however, is also about a marriage, its ups and downs, what can go wrong, how a cuckolded husband handles his wife's infidelity. .etc. Certainly the best thing in the movie is McQueen's usual understated performance. While he is not Marlon Brando, he doesn't have to be. A man of few words, he acts with both his face and body. Initially I thought Ali MacGraw (famous in the 1970's) was going to be only mildly pretty with a great mane of hair, but she does rise to the occasion and is quite good as the wife who makes the sacrifice of adultery to get her husband out of jail. The scenes between this couple work and sometimes sizzle; the fact that they were having an affair off-screen during the filming of "The Getaway" probably didn't hurt either. (MacGraw left her husband Robert Evans and married McQueen soon after the completion of the movie.)

As we would expect from the director of the over-rated "Straw Dogs" and the brilliant "The Wild Bunch", The Getaway has enough violence for the most bloodthirsty viewer. This is, after all, a film about a bank robbery. On the other hand, McCoy appears to be a decent man if only left alone, if you disregard his profession. He only kills when absolutely necessary. The music, cinematography and the editing are second to none.

The amazing extras on this version are an audio commentary from DVD producer Nick Redman and authors Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons and David Weddle. Also a 'Virtual' audio commentary with 1973 radio recordings of Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw and Sam Peckinpah discussing the movie.