A Perfect Getaway - Blu-ray Review

'muddily handled in the extreme, leaving a sense of bewilderment rather than enticement'

In a film in which the highlight ends up being Timothy Olyphant's mastery of the word 'outstanding', there really should be more to like about David Twohy's serial killer thriller A Perfect Getaway. Unfortunately, much of the film is given over to a lengthy setup in which nothing much happens apart from the discovery that a couple are murdering tourists around the Hawaiian islands.

This should lead to plenty of tension and a couple of major reveals but Twohy only manages one half of that equation, giving us his serial killers on a platter having cooked up only one fairly short scene towards the end of the film which registered as even slightly adrenalin pumping. The three couples we know of who could plausibly be the killers (Steve Zahn/Milla Jovovich, Timothy Olyphant/Kiele Sanchez, Chris Hemsworth/Marley Shelton) are also muddily handled in the extreme, leaving a sense of bewilderment rather than enticement once the evil doer's motives are extracted via messy emotional introspection.

A hit and miss cast don't help matters, with Olyphant the only standout in a crowd that meander between being as awful as everything else they've been in recently (Jovovich), to hopelessly miss cast (Zahn), to having little to work with beyond being a slightly damaged-goods wife (Shelton). Sanchez is fine as Olyphant's other half but again feels under-developed whilst soon-to-be Thor Hemsworth is required to do little apart from act tough and grow a beard.

If it seems like most of the blame lies at Twohy's feet then that's because as screenwriter, it absolutely does. Not-so subtle hints such as a pair of hikers telling one of the couples that 'there's plenty of twists and turns ahead' are ladled in at an astonishingly cringe worthy rate, coupled with near-constant reminders that one of the characters is 'really hard to kill' an in-joke that, guess what, eventually gets its payoff. The fact too that Zahn's character just happens to be a screenwriter, indulging in constant conversations about the art form nearly took the biscuit, an oatmeal which was reserved, crumbs and all, for the horribly twee romanticised conclusion.

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'The entire film is meant to play with us, to put us in situations we know nothing about, and in that context, the ending fits just fine' - The King Bulletin, 3/4