Honeymoon Horror! 'A Perfect Getaway' Review...
Of all of the rare movie breeds - such as the good teen horror movie, the impressive first (or second) sequel, or the bad Nicholas Cage movie (yeah, you heard me) - one of the rarest is the formula thriller that rises above its genre and not only entertains but even manages to dig some surprises out of the sand and prevent the third act from being an intolerably boring exercise in violent predictability. Big screen thrillers tend to do nothing for me, they always seem to come off as diluted horror films with wispy threads of a plot strung along a lot of half-baked sex scenes permeated with some miscellaneous combination of suspicion and betrayal and whatnot. Yawn. But A Perfect Getaway is a pleasant surprise on several different levels.The movie sets itself up as a typical thriller, we meet a lot of suspicious characters in the first 25 minutes or so before the cast happens upon three vacationing sorority girls standing around in the wilderness making apprehensive exclamations to each other about the murderer that they just heard is loose on the island with them. At this point it feels like all the ingredients have been haphazardly tossed into the movie and we can only sit back and watch all the rest of the pieces fall into place. But director David Twohy understands how to manipulate the ingredients enough to trick us into thinking we’re seeing something fresh and original.
Twohy is, however, more experienced as a writer than a director, but his helming skills are clearly developing nicely, while his writing skills seem to have suffered. I'll tell you why in a minute, but in the past he has built a fairly extensive list of sort of writing credits, despite having only helmed half a dozen disappointing movies in the last almost 20 years like Pitch Black, The Arrival, and The Chronicles of Riddick, but he seems to be finding his groove behind the camera. This is definitely his best film to date.
So here’s the plot in 100 words – Two newlyweds honeymooning in Hawaii learn of some grisly murders and two killers at large, a man and a woman. Soon afterwards they encounter two other suspicious couples, and together they embark on an uncomfortable journey through the remote Hawaiian wilderness, all the while trying to act all normal like they don’t suspect everyone around them of being murderers. Complicating matters is that all of the suspects tend to sporadically act like lunatics. Criminal records, mysterious military pasts, a petite brunette with the butchering skills of Fritz Haarmann, etc. Find the killers and get out alive. Or both. Preferably both.
That’s easier said than done in thrillers, of course, but what sets A Perfect Getaway apart from it’s weaker counterparts is that it doesn’t focus solely on the tired tension of the central characters trying to get out without getting all killed first, it moves in the direction of being more of an intense character drama. And thankfully, the performances are good. The main characters are Cliff and Cydney (Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich), who show here that they have both made huge developments as actors during their careers.
Timothy Olyphant, who you might remember as the villain in Die Hard 4, uses his Jack Nicholson-like appearance as Nick, probably fitting into his role more comfortably than anyone else in the movie. Kiele Sanchez plays Gina, Nick’s girlfriend, and Marley Shelton and Chris Hemsworth play Cleo and Kale, the most unhinged-looking couple in the movie.The only real complaint I have about the movie is that the characters spend significant amounts of time, on more than one occasion, talking about acting and screenwriting and things like that. This isn’t a problem in itself, but I have a secret theory that anytime you see someone in a movie having a conversation about screenwriting, it’s because there was a screenwriter (in this case also the director) who ran out of ideas. But even though all of the parts of a formula thriller are in place, and the movie even has an unshakable mechanical feel, the entertainment level is high and there are some good surprises at the end. And seriously, what more have we ever asked from a good thriller?
The Bean Meter
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