★ 6 / 10
**_Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw and others chasing a
Wuchak
**_Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw and others chasing a bag of cash in Texas_** A prisoner in Huntsville (McQueen) is released early due to his wife (MacGraw)…
**_Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw and others chasing a bag of cash in Texas_**
A prisoner in Huntsville (McQueen) is released early due to his wife (MacGraw) making a deal with a corrupt official (Ben Johnson). The cost of his freedom is to head a bank heist in San Marcos with the officer’s questionable henchmen (Al Lettieri and Bo Hopkins). O, what a tangled web we weave.
“The Getaway” (1972) is a crime thriller written by Walter Hill based on Jim Thompson’s book and was director Sam Peckinpah’s second most successful film at the box office, after “Convoy” six years later. It was remade in 1994 with Alec Baldwin and influenced soon-to-come movies like “The Outfit,” "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry," "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" and “The Gauntlet,” as well as later ones like “No Country for Old Men.”
If you like those flicks, you’ll appreciate this one, although it ranks with the least of ’em IMHO. Why? Because the bank job is unnecessarily convoluted, not to mention expensive, with the myriad pre-caper photographs, a cliched last-minute briefing session in a basement, severing electrical cables in the sewer tunnels and even diversionary explosions. Why Sure! Then there’s the curious train station sequence with a convenient con man that’s inserted into the midsection, which I admit is entertaining in a Hitchcockian way.
Lastly, despite some amusing bits, the proceedings are shrouded by a pessimistic and ugly perspective. I get that the protagonists are antiheroes, but the film needed more glimmerings of nobility and love, and less murderous venality. “Pulp Fiction” is a good example.
Ali looks good on the feminine front and is, thankfully, way less annoying than her character in “Love Story.” Blonde Sally Struthers eventually appears and never looked better at 23 during shooting, but her character is a ditzy turnoff.
McQueen would marry costar MacGraw seven months after the movie’s release, but their marriage would only last five years.
It runs 2 hours, 2 minutes, and was shot entirely in Texas at Huntsville (prison), San Marcos (bank robbery), San Antonio (train station), Fabens (city street confrontation) and El Paso (Laughlin Hotel).
GRADE: B-/C+
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★ 8 / 10
Exciting McQueen/MacGraw action movie with violent Peckinpah direction
sapblatt
This 1972 action crime movie begins with Steve McQueen (Carter `Doc' McCoy) passing time in prison. The fact that the time is slowly destroying him is…
This 1972 action crime movie begins with Steve McQueen (Carter `Doc' McCoy) passing time in prison. The fact that the time is slowly destroying him is creatively directed by Sam Peckinpah with lots of repetitive machine images and stop-action photography. McQueen's inner turmoil is exacerbated by losing a chess match with a fellow inmate and by his destruction of an intricate bridge model he spent a great deal of time building. The plot thickens when McCoy tells his wife to contact the local political boss and tell him that he is for sale and will do anything to get paroled.
McQueen gets out and the action is on from this point forward. The bank robbery is screwed up and the leads to the long crazy getaway. McCoy's force partner Rudy, played by Al Lettieri (`Mr. Magestyk,' `The Godfather') has always played the consummate bad guy, and he does not disappoint here. In `The Getaway' Rudy kills the third partner, tries to kill McCoy at the meeting spot and then kidnaps a veterinarian and his wife (Sally Struthers and eventually makes her his girlfriend and her husband, who cannot takes it hangs himself.
Like in most Peckinpah films it is the style and the violence that sticks out. There are memorable fisticuff scenes as well has the required explosions and gunshot scenes. Ones that stand out include the all too realistic slaps to the face to Ali MacGraw after Doc learns that he had been set up by her and the incredible beating of a thief played by Richard Bright (`The Panic in Needle Park' and `The Godfather' who unknowingly steals the bank robbery money in a con game in a train station and is eventually caught by McCoy. Also of note are a series of diversionary explosions that are set off right after the bank robbery and an incredible shotgun destruction of a police car. The grand finale in an El Paso hotel is not to be missed. As rough and violent as all of this is it is important to note a quieter more sympathetic side of McCoy that is played my Steve McQueen. On a few occasions he makes it clear to people in his path that if they do what he says, when he says it they will be left alone and therefore survive. Much like in Peckinpah's earlier film, `The Wild Bunch' there is an honor among thieves, or a code of ethics that is important for the protagonist(s) to uphold.
Another aspect of this morality is played off in a sarcastic and ironic manner in the last seen. A trash collector played by Slim Pickens (`Dr. Strangelove,' `Blazing Saddles') is willingly kidnapped to assist McQueen and MacGraw cross the border into Mexico. Even though he has a good idea of the kinds of life the criminals are leading Pickens is very happy to hear that the couple is married and he feels that society is falling apart due to a lack of morals. In light of the excessive violence that occurs in this film it is funny that Peckinpah's film comments that all would be morally OK if young people just stick to the traditions of marriage.
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Great Film 10/10