Let me start to say, for purists, that Sam Peckinpah is one of my all time favorite directors and an inovator on staging action sequences and handling over-the-top violence to the screen and the original "The Getaway", starring the then couple Steve McQueen & Ali McGraw, remains untouchable and a cult classic of the action / crime / thriller genre. However, and even if i usually despise modern remakes (except in some cases), this Roger Donaldson's rendition of Peckinpah's cult flick is in fact a very good entry in the genre.By 1994, this Aussie director was already an established director in U.S.A. after he helm'd the political thriller "No Way Out" ('87) starring Kevin Costner in one of his first leading roles, Gene Hackman and Sean Young; the romance / drama "Cocktail" ('88) starring Tom Cruise and Elisabeth Shue or "White Sands" ('92), an extremely underrated crime / thriller film starring Willem Dafoe, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Samuel L. Jackson and Mickey Rourke and was chosen to fill Peckinpah's shoes directing this remake which Donaldson did with his peculiar sense of visual style, well-staged action sequences and a bunch of good actors giving life to vivid and colorful characters."The Getaway" moves frantically forward, with a great sense of pace and editing; the screenplay by Walter Hill, who also penned the original movie, based on the 1958 crime novel by Jim Thompson, is incisive and straight to the point, enhancing the 1972 version to the more sophisticated 90's, but without losing its soul and stamina on the process.The casting of the then couple, Alec Baldwin & Kim Basinger as the McCoy couple, provides almost the same McQueen / McGraw electric on screen chemistry and even if Baldwin wasn't on McQueen's level, let's be honest, who was ?The supporting cast is near perfection: the always sleazy and a riot to watch, James Woods (he would play almost the same character in the next year's "The Specialist" starring Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone and Eric Roberts); the forever underrated character actor, David Morse; the late Philip Seymour Hoffman (credited as Philip Hoffman) in one of his first major roles; "The Straight Story" beloved old timer, Richard Farnsworth and Burton Gilliam, but Michael Madsen as the quirky & vicious, Rudy Travis and Jennifer Tilly as his submissive girlfriend, Fran Carvey, made a cool looney couple that almost stole the movie from the leads.An interesting fact is that Madsen plays his character so Mickey Rourke-ish: his manneirisms and on-screen persona; the machismo, self-confident arrogance & misogynism; the eccentric urban cowboy clothes ("Wild Orchid"); the chopper and even the hairstyle (Rourke was sporting long blonde / reddish hair back in 1993 when this movie went into production, check "The Last Outlaw") that maybe it's possible that Mickey Rourke was the first choice for the role (he already worked with the screenwriter Walter Hill in "Johnny Handsome" ('89) and two years before with Donaldson in "White Sands", which he played Gorman Lennox, a very similar character to Rudy), but after the troublesome shooting of "Nine and a Half Weeks" ('86) and Baldwin's crescent stardom against Rourke's career decline, the couple probably vetoed to his casting.In short, "The Getaway" isn't by all means a masterpiece movie, neither the original was, it was unfairly bashed by critics and nominated for of few Razzies (the same Razzies that nominated Kubrick for worst director, can you get how laughable this Awards are ?), but aside of all the badmouthin, it's a very entertaining, sexy, steamy & stylish flick that can put the nowadays action / crime / thrillers to shame.I give it an 8, because it's a remake, but it's worthy of a 8.5 !!

Films like The Getaway are always fascinating to me on one level. That's because they demonstrate how important the most elemental and obvious choices in storytelling are and getting just one simple thing wrong can hamstring even the most talented filmmakers and performers. This movie is well written and nicely plotted. It has plenty of action and a couple of nice sex scenes. The cast is as good as you'll get for this sort of thing and the direction is unobjectionably competent. All of that goes almost entirely to waste, however, because the two main characters here are unsympathetic criminals whom the audience has no reason whatsoever to root for or care about what happens to them.Don't get me wrong. You can make a compelling and involving film about bad people. The star of every story doesn't have to be some selfless, noble champion of truth, justice and the American way. But if you're going to make a motion picture about a cold blooded villain, you've got to treat him as such and not try to pass him off as a hero. People like looking at sharks but they won't respond to you trying to pretend a great white shark is as cute and relatively harmless as a bottlenose dolphin.Carter "Doc" McCoy (Alec Baldwin) is a smart and stylish thief who can pretty much figure out how to get in anywhere to get anything. Teamed with his beautiful and devoted wife Carol (Kim Basinger), the two pass through a series of twists and turns until they end up on the run from a treacherous partner, some vengeance-seeking gunmen and the law enforcement. And let me stress again, all of that is well executed. Maybe The Getaway isn't a great action-adventure flick, but it's got all the right parts moving in all the right ways to be a very good one.None of it matters much because the movie never gives you a reason to really care if Doc and Carol live or die, succeed or fail, get caught and sent to prison or escape and live happily ever after. I don't think Doc does a single good or admirable thing until 90 minutes into the film. He's portrayed as a remorseless criminal who has not trouble at all assaulting an innocent cab driver or committing attempted murder by firing a shotgun at pursuing cops. The only good thing Carol does involved morally compromising herself to benefit Doc, which largely negates any credit she gets for being selfless.The Getaway rises and falls on one question. Why should the viewer cheer for Doc and Carol while booing their enemies? No explanation is ever provided, other than the charisma of its two stars. Well, Kim Basinger can project a fragile vulnerability like nobody's business but Carol is bound at the hip to Doc and for all of Alec Baldwin's dramatic and comedic abilities, he's never been a performer who radiated likability. At least not until he let himself get fat for TV. Now, I haven't seen the original and don't know how it handled the question of why people should care about these two characters. Maybe Steve McQueen could pull off what Baldwin couldn't or maybe the audience of the early 70s was more inclined to support unrepentant bad guys like Doc McCoy. This remake doesn't answer the question at all, let alone answer it badly.It would not be at all fair to call The Getaway a bad movie. It's never boring, the action scenes are pretty good and Basinger gets naked on more than one occasion, at least in the unrated version I saw. But I wouldn't have cared a whit if Doc and Carol had wound up dead in the desert instead of riding off into the sunset. I suppose someone else might like it much more than I, but I think the general reaction would be a shrug and the statement "Well, that was okay". In other words, if you've got nothing better to do, there are worse ways of wasting your time.

Don't get me wrong. I think that Alec Baldwin could have been great in this film, but the made the Doc character way too much of a wuss. Plus many of the scenes looked like an acting class that decided to use the scenes from the original as their scripted material. There was no tension and much of the subtext just disappeared. Still, there was good use of some character actors like Richard Farnsworth slotted into some of the smaller key roles and it was nice to pick up on some of the references to the original film. However, the overall viewing experience was far less fulfilling than the original, that kicked ass from start to finish.Also, do dog race tracks really hold huge amounts of money like that?

wow.lots of action,some brutal violence,even some black comedy thrown into the mix.oh,yeah,also some steamy love scenes and some double crosses.that pretty much describes "The Getaway".for me,all this is a good thing.at least,it works in this movie.there's a great cast,who all put in great performances.Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger play the two lead characters,with great supporting work from Micheal Madsen,James Woods,Jeniffer Tilly and Richard Farnsworth.if you like a action packed movie and don't mind brutal violence and nudity or foul language(there's a lot of that in here)you should enjoy this 1.as an added bonus,there are a couple of twists and,like i mentioned earlier,some black humour.myself,i really had a good time with this movie.i give "The Getaway" 9/10