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]