And thus does a summer that started with a silly car chase picture end with a sillier one.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetaway\u201d has some of the elements of a good gear grinder \u2014 a B-movie where a car takes a pivotal role in the cast.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s got Ethan Hawke, doing enough of his own driving to pass muster with the likes of Ryan Gosling (\u201cDrive\u201d), Dax Shepard (\u201cHit and Run\u201d), or Paul Walker (\u201cFast & Furious\u201d).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s got a cool car \u2014 a Shelby Super Snake version of the Ford Mustang.<\/p>\n
It has an unusual city setting \u2014 Sofia, Bulgaria.<\/p>\n
And then Selena Gomez shows up as the mouthy, tech-savvy sidekick dragged along for a long, Christmas season chase through the not-quite-generic (tramlines, train tracks) mean streets of Sofia.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where the silly kicks in. Things turn pulse-pounding in the third act, but that\u2019s entirely too late to rescue this end-of-summer orphan.<\/p>\n
The improbable set-up: Disgraced racing driver Brent Magna\u2019s Bulgarian wife (Rebecca Budig) has been kidnapped. He gets a call and is told to steal a particular armored, camera-packed Mustang that he will drive on a series of \u201ctasks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The villain, whose chin stubble and martini-slurping lips are all we see, is played by Jon Voight with a German accent.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re runnink out off time \u2014 tic toc, tic toc,\u201d he purrs, and we\u2019re off.<\/p>\n
Having a car covered with cameras raises the variety of shots and sometimes amps up the pulse-pounding nature of the chases, choreographed by Charlie Picerni. Until you notice that door mirrors that popped off the Mustang in the last chase magically return in the next scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t believe that worked,\u201d Magna confesses after one escape. Too often, neither can we, despite the non-digital \/ real-cars-having-real-crashes nature of the beast.<\/p>\n
A guy whose wife has been kidnapped and threatened with death should be a lot more worked up and manic than Hawke plays this fellow. And one would think that a young woman snatched for a ride-along would be freaking at this or that hair-raising chase, the streets filling with wrecked Bulgarian cop cars, the machine-gunning motorcyclists and what not. The leads don\u2019t turn up the requisite adrenalin-jacked pitch of their voices or their acting. They\u2019re really in that car, but they\u2019re entirely too calm about all this mayhem.<\/p>\n
Director Courtney Solomon (\u201cAn American Haunting\u201d) is plainly out of his depth, and when the always reliable Hawke plays a character in the wrong key, that points back to a director who doesn\u2019t have the stature or standing to \u201cdirect\u201d him.<\/p>\n
Maybe they all took a gander at that random, ridiculous scenario and hoped that the car would be cool enough to bail them out. It isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetaway\u201d is rated PG-13 for intense action, violence and mayhem throughout, some rude gestures and language. 1:28. 1 1\/2 stars