The Getaway

The Getaway Information

The Getaway is a 1994 crime thriller and a remake of the 1972 film of the same name. The film stars Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, Michael Madsen, James Woods, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jennifer Tilly, and was directed by Roger Donaldson.

Plot

Carter "Doc" McCoy (Baldwin) and his wife Carol (Basinger) are taking target practice with pistols when Rudy (Madsen) arrives to propose they break a Mexican drug lord's nephew out of jail for a $300,000 payment. The job is successful, but it turns out the drug lord only wanted his nephew out to kill him.

Rudy is waiting with a getaway plane, but sees police cars and leaves Doc behind. After a year in a Mexican jail, Doc will do anything to get out so he sends Carol to a mob boss (Woods) who is looking to put together a select team of experts to rob a dog track in Arizona. The man she goes to see, Jack Benyon, would manage to get Doc released from prison, but it's clear Benyon wants something from the wife first.

Doc gets out and meets the men Benyon has hired. By chance one is Rudy, along with another man called Hansen (Hoffman) who seems relatively inexperienced. Rudy extends a hand and says "no hard feelings," but is punched by Doc and warned not to double-cross him again.

At the dog track, while Doc is breaking into the vault, a guard pulls a gun and is shot by Hansen in a panic. The thieves escape by creating a diversion with a bomb under a gas truck and leave with the cash. The plan was for Doc and his wife to meet Rudy and Hansen later to split the money. On the road, Rudy kills Hansen and pushes him out of the car.

Doc arrives at the rendezvous point, where Rudy again pulls a gun. Doc expected this and is ready with his own weapon, shooting Rudy and leaving him for dead. Doc and Carol drive off with all the money, unaware that Rudy was wearing a bullet-proof vest, a safety precaution that he had earlier mocked.

A wounded Rudy manages to drive himself to a local clinic, where he holds veterinarian Harold (James Stephens) and his wife Fran (Jennifer Tilly) hostage, then forces them to treat his wounds and drive him to El Paso. An attraction develops between Rudy and Fran and they taunt her meek husband. At a motel, Rudy has sex with Fran after tying Harold to a chair. Hearing his wife's moans and her laughter at him, a humiliated Harold commits suicide by hanging himself. Fran barely looks back as she accompanies Rudy to El Paso.

Doc and his wife go to Benyon's house with the money. Benyon drops broad hints about what Carol did to get Doc out of jail. Doc's wife approaches with a gun, unseen by Doc as he counts the money. Benyon clearly expects her to shoot Doc, but she kills him instead.

Doc is upset, but Carol says she did whatever she had to do to help Doc and assumes he'd do the same if their situations were reversed. There continues to be tension between the pair, particularly when Carol loses the money to a con man at a train station in Flagstaff. Doc has to board the train, find the man and subdue him to retrieve the money.

They proceed to the rustic Border Hotel in El Paso, owned by Doc's friend Gollie, to get new passports and identities so they can escape to Mexico. They don't realize that Rudy is already there ahead of them, waiting with Fran in a room at the hotel. Benyon's men, led by Jim Deer (David Morse), also want the money and arrive in El Paso shortly after the McCoys.

Rudy sets a trap and Doc is startled to see him alive. He knocks out Rudy but resists killing him in cold blood. A long and bloody gunfight ensues with Doc and Carol shooting it out with Benyon's men in the halls and stairwells of the hotel.

Rudy comes to his senses just as the last of Benyon's men die. He makes one more attempt to get the money and is killed by Doc in an elevator when Doc shoots the cables, sending the elevator plummeting down to ground level and crashing it hard, much to the horror of Fran. Doc and Carol hijack a pickup truck driven by an old cowboy (Richard Farnsworth) and drive to the border of Mexico. They like the cowboy and buy his truck, paying far more than it's worth, then make their getaway.

Cast

Alec Baldwin as Carter "Doc" McCoy
Kim Basinger as Carol McCoy
Michael Madsen as Rudy Travis
James Woods as Jack Benyon
David Morse as Jim Deer Jackson
Jennifer Tilly as Fran Carvey
James Stephens as Harold Carvey, DVM
Richard Farnsworth as Slim
Philip Seymour Hoffman as Frank Hansen
Burton Gilliam as Gollie
Elske McCain as Driver

Production

Filming locations

The film is a criminal road trip movie taking the couple across the American southwest. Locations in the script include Phoenix and Flagstaff, Arizona, New Mexico, and border town El Paso, Texas. Standing in for these communities, the film was actually shot in Tucson, Yuma, Phoenix, and The Apache Lodge in Prescott, Arizona. An exterior, establishing shot for one scene is believed to have been filmed in San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, Mexico. The location portrayed as the Border Hotel in El Paso is the Hotel Del Sol (formerly Hotel Del Ming) in Yuma, Arizona. It was filmed in the spring of 1993.

This film is a remake of Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway. Some character names and locations are changed. The writers and producers did not make this version of the film more faithful to Jim Thompson's novel than Peckinpah's version; the 'El Rey' ending from the novel was not included in this film.

Reception

The film garnered mixed-to-negative reviews from critics and has a rating of 33% on Rotten Tomatoes. It earned a Razzie Award nomination for Kim Basinger as Worst Actress.