The Getaway

Putting up with weeks - or even months - of such media-fed psychobabble is a big price to pay for a couple of hours of defiantly unwholesome entertainment. The Getaway might just be worth it, though. Read full review

The casting this time also features a husband-and-wife team, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, and for the first hour or so, this new version sizzles as they battle with mobster James Woods and assorted henchmen over divving up stolen loot. Director Roger Donaldson gives us a nice sense of sleazy place in the American Southwest-gravel, heat, cheap bars, fast cars. [11 Feb 1994, p.C2]

This is a pro's movie, solid, taut and trim, done mostly with exemplary skill. That's its trouble, perhaps. This Getaway knows the score too well, entertains us too effectively, beguiles us too knowingly. [11 Feb 1994, p.A]

The Getaway is a pretty good remake of a pretty good action thriller. Read full review

Their appeal as a couple of gorgeous outlaws is the main reason to see this sleek, entertaining remake of Sam Peckinpah's 1972 action film. Read full review

A perfectly respectable thriller that mostly manages to be as crisp and efficient as the crimes it depicts, this Roger Donaldson-directed Getaway compares favorably with the Sam Peckinpah original. Read full review

Ultimately, however, the only real problem with the new version of "The Getaway" is that Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger just don't seem very believable as tough professional criminals. You just know they are only a shower and a manicure away from dinner at Spago. [11 Feb 1994, p.3E]

The first moral of the faithfully amoral remake of Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway is that Steve McQueen is irreplaceable. Second: Slavish faithfulness can be risky if the original is only middling Peckinpah to start. Third: Married co-stars sometimes reserve their sexual heat for off-camera Malibu mattresses. [11 Feb 1994, p.4D]

A little too exactly like the original but with (fewer) memorable performances. Read full review

It's a treat to see the double-barrelled menace of Woods and Madsen together at last. Read full review

The movie is a true throwaway: By the end, it seems to have disposed of itself. Read full review

Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger step into the roles originally played by Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, but their attempts to inject steamy romance into the action are undermined by indifferent direction. Read full review

This remake of the 1972 Peckinpah gem lacks the Ali McGraw/Steve McQueen heart and soul of the original, opting instead for the vacuous and thoroughly forgettable anti-chemistry of Baldwin and Basinger. Read full review

Director Roger Donaldson seems a bit too obviously caught up in the slick technology of zapping us with mayhem and death to allow Thompson's gritty viciousness to take root. [11 Feb 1994, p.41]

The Getaway isn't going to bore anybody, but it's not going to do anything else either. [11 Feb 1994, p.03]

The showcasing of Basinger's body becomes ludicrous. Twice she is shown taking a shower. In another scene she lounges in some very nice designer underwear -- white satin, very becoming. She ends up looking foolish, constantly having to undress in this feminist role. [11 Feb 1994, p.C1]

The Getaway gradually devolves into just another high-polish shoot'em-up between half-baked characters. Led by Baldwin, everyone's acting so cool they're prit'near frozen. [11 Feb 1994, p.D24]

Donaldson mimics the original shot-for-shot in some sequences, adding sordid violence that would have been too extreme even for Peckinpah. What's needed is a fast Getaway. This is merely Donaldson, Hill and glamorous stars spinning their wheels. [11 Feb 1994, p.6B]

Seeking both conventional action and quirky atmosphere, it achieves a little of each and not enough of either. [15 Feb 1994]

Spouses Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger -- the latest flavors of the month to tie the knot -- slum their way through a glam-noirish extended video. Amid director Roger Donaldson's pseudo-atmospherics and the ersatz Thompson fare hacked up by screenwriters Walter Hill and Amy Holden Jones, they shoot guns, plan heists, talk tough and make love in silhouette. Read full review

A particularly nasty and mean-spirited action picture, with the dramatic depth of an arcade game. Read full review

The Getaway is more of a carbon copy than a new take on the same story. This new version is a bit bloodier, considerably sexier -- there's one particularly steamy love scene here -- and just as dull and irrelevant as the original. [11 Feb 1994, p.G5]

An utterly pointless remake of Sam Peckinpah's hair-raising road movie. Updated and dumbed down, this anemic variation on the bloodier 1972 original is primarily an opportunity for those vast legions of Baldwin-Basinger voyeurs. You know who you are. Read full review