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If you were to go by the poster, which 13 year old me often did back then, “The Getaway” was supposed to be the sexy thrill ride of 1994. A remake of the Sam Peckinpah film with Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, this had the guns, the mayhem, and what looked like the simmering intensity of married couple Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger; an intensity that in the film is surprisingly frigid. “March of the Penguins” had more heat.


Baldwin plays Doc McCoy, a safecracker double crossed in the opening minutes and sent to a Mexican prison. He needs to get out so his wife Carole (Basinger) goes to string-puller Jack Benyon (James Woods), who springs him from jail with the hopes that he’ll return the favor by doing a much bigger job that will make them all very rich. But more double crosses occur, leaving us to wonder how often this happens to Doc.


Directed by Roger Donaldson, the film is slick from a technical level. He takes us through the various capers and gun battles with efficiency and there’s even a tremendous explosion used as a diversion early on. As the film becomes more of a chase with Doc and Carole on the run from various bad guys and cops, there are a few fun interludes, like the couple hiding in a dumpster only to get collected (and compressed) inside a garbage truck.


You also can’t fault the supporting casting. No one plays duplicitous with more twisted glee than Woods (who unfortunately is not in the movie as much as he really should be), while Michael Madsen, David Morse, and an antsy Phillip Seymour Hoffman play cons in his employ. Madsen also eventually hooks up with Jennifer Tilly, playing the slutty wife of a veterinarian who eventually turns him into an unwilling cuckold. Perhaps there’s no other actress who could make this as depraved and immorally funny as Tilly does.


Amongst all this mayhem and mean-spirited comedy I think we’re supposed to care about the main couple, two people who find themselves on the outs at the film’s mid-way point only to find themselves strengthened during this whole ordeal. Only a couple problems with that: we learn very little about them in the first place, many of their relationship struggles are presented as half-hearted and predictably easy to overcome, and in what is the biggest drawback- everything from their talks to their short sex scenes together are done with blank stares in the place of any real passion.


“The Getaway” works ok as a thriller: there’s even an ending shoot-out where everyone converges on a hotel and gets style points for their gun play. Baldwin and Basinger were supposed to take lead here though, and it doesn’t seem like they’re putting much effort into it, at least not anywhere near as enjoyable as everyone else. Remaking this one could have worked, but someone should have told them to have some fun with it.