GETAWAY Review

Courtney Solomon is no Justin Lin. Solomon could hardly even be considered a player at all in the action genre as he's only made three films and the first was 2000's Dungeons & Dragons adaptation that I never saw because I was both too young to care about it at the time and would have likely been massively confused if I had. I never played the game and the current 10% tomatometer score doesn't bode well for it either, but what really put the anticipation in the can for Getaway was knowing that Solomon also directed 2005's An American Haunting. I remember taking a date to that film and apologizing for how bad it turned out to be because it was my idea to go see it. With this third feature the director has made one of those films where all of the action revolves around a certain set of people locked into one location. This certainly might make things easier from a production standpoint as you don't have to deal with a ton of location scouting or all of the dynamics that go into orchestrating a production with a large cast involved, but when your location of confinement is on wheels there seems a much more complex scheme to choreograph and Getaway never seems to take advantage of its circumstances other than to feed us corny dialogue and messily shot action sequences that seem more thrown together than thought out. To be honest, there wasn't much expectation going into the film, but when you have such a simple premise and what seems to be outlandish execution paired with the fact that actors with the caliber of Ethan Hawke and the rising star of Selena Gomez presumably seeing something in the project you hope it might prove to be a fun, if not distracting experience. And yet, there isn't even an intentionally campy vibe to the project as it, for all intents and purposes, is as serious as a heart attack and with that tone does little to add fun to the predictable and lacking story that can't even sustain the brief hour and a half running time.