The Getaway (1972)

I know Sam Peckinpah's "Getaway" is likely to generate calls for boycott or censorship because of the infamous scene where Steve McQueen slaps Ali McGraw not once but several times, even looking for hitting her face with a closed fist, but when you're aware of some backstories, you know the scene works.I was astonished by how severe in a disappointingly shallow way the film was initially reviewed despite its commercial success (second after "The Godfather"). Roger Ebert, who loved "The Wild Bunch" and "The Ballad of Cable Hogue", seemed only concerned by the contrivances in the 'heist' and 'shootout' parts. Yet there's more in the film than robbing a bank, escaping with the sound of screeching sound tires and explosive shotguns, there's more than the usual standards of action movies, what the film got was sexual tension, so palpable you could cut through it. "Doc" McCoy is a convict trying to get parole in the midst of a boring and alienating daily routine, improvising scale models in his cell, playing chess or working at a driving license plates' factory. The machinery, pondered by Quincy Jones' jazzy score, gets quickly on our nerves, working as a perfect metaphor of some deep psychological turmoil. Or is it sentimental?While many criminals or antiheroes seem more telegenic as loners or women's men, Doc has a wife, not a girlfriend. This is a true relationship but one that wouldn't survive for too long if McCoy stays in jail. Heasks Carol to to tell Benyon (a Texan big shot with a nasty looking crew played by Ben Johnson) he would accept any offer. In an amusing ellipse, a sexily dressed Carol joins Benyon off-screen and the scene cuts to Doc's release, whatever happened in-between works like a ticking bomb, we know it.The park scene is one of these quiet poetic moments not so rare with not-so-tough Peckinpah (like the picnic in "Alfredo Garcia"). As McCoy watches people sunbathing, swimming, and snuggling, he imagines he and Carol doing the same. Is he mirroring Sam's own perception of a talent wasted for violence? The way imaginary visions overlap with reality shows a real psychological struggle after four years of repressed emotionality... and sensuality, only McQueen could still look cool with a block, only Sam could be sentimental in a macho flick. After the bucolic interlude, we get some awkward conversations, a few confidences and the ice seems broken the following morning when Doc is cooking breakfast. If you think the robbery or the chase will be the next main story, you'll be surprised, the other focus is also a romance albeit more "conventional" by Peckinpah standards.Doc is assigned two partners for a robbery, a disposable one played by a youngish Bo Hopkins and one of the meanest looking mugs of the seventies, Al Lettieri who was born to play the "baddest guy", as good a match for Brando and Pacino in "The Godfather" as a nemesis for McQueen. His character Rudy is wounded after trying to double-cross Doc who was quicker at the draw... he finds a meek and recluse veterinarian named Harold, and in his slutty blonde wife Fran (Sally Struthers) an unexpected object of sensual attraction. In a scene that wasn't played for subtlety, she sensually caresses his gun, telling him he doesn't need to point it at her... not that gun away. The parallels between the couples how and I loved how the beta one had a growing chemistry while at the same moment, Doc is slapping the hell out of Carol after he finds out how he got the ticket for freedom. She makes things worse when she almost loses the loot in the train station after being conned by another "Godfather" alumni. Unlike Richard, she wasn't so "bright" within the circumstances, but she had an attitude.Sam makes us think, a woman like Fran gave her body for nothing, Carol sold her own for her husband's freedom and he's got the nerve to accuse her. Now is he bitter because his wife is a slut or because he couldn't get clean again by soiling the woman he loved the most? The two relationships reach pivotal moments. Harold, the cuckold husband after one humiliation too many, hangs himself much to Fran and Rudy's indifference. Later, Doc and Carol finally reestablish their relationship. They decide to move forward and leave the past behind or where it belongs, in the most adequate place, a garbage dump. So we have a "good couple / bad couple" situation, but both on the wrong side from the law and the closest thing to a moral scope is marriage. The climactic shootout is another instance where the maverick director proved his mastery of the action but after "The Wild Bunch" and "Straw Dogs", there's not much new stuff to praise, though I enjoyed the cameo of Dub Taylor, that hilarious punch Struthers got for not keeping her mouth shut. As sad as it was, I guess Rudy's death was the perfect revenge of Karma for what Fran did to her husband. Karma-wise, it's also appropriate that the last helping hand comes from an old-fashioned cowboy played by Slim Pickens (another great cameo) who rants about the lack of morality and marital commitment while describing his wife as a pillar in his life, he gets a great retribution.But I wasn't glad that the good couple could get away it with the money, but because they did it together, but maybe Ali McGraw should have learned a lesson from the film. She treated producers Robert Evans like Fran with Harold, she couldn't resist McQueen who revealed himself to be quite a "Rudy" with her.... and her career was derailed like Fran's life.That fact of life made the sexual tension believable because the actors didn't play it, but it's crazy how truth can be stranger than fiction, bitchier too.

How can it get any better than Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw in an anti-establishment fable directed by Sam Peckinpah? What makes the film so excellent, in addition to its well-crafted, well-directed and mostly well-acted story, is the use of location filming, tense chase scenes that give us action-action- action...and a smattering of supporting players (many having found greater fame on television by the time they were cast in these roles) that give the story flavor, energy and colorful characterization. Among these folks, I want to mention Jack Dodson as a hostage forced to drive; Dub Taylor as a seedy motel manager; Slim Pickens as a cowboy; and of course, Sally Struthers as Fran, a wannabe Bonnie Parker whose heart inevitably gets broken on the run. Struthers should have had a supporting actress nomination, because she is that good. Do not miss the rib-throwing scene about two-thirds of the way through the movie. It's classic.As for the leads, I understand they fell in love during the making of this picture and divorced their respective spouses to marry each other. To say they share a special chemistry is underestimating the laws of physical attraction. I expected MacGraw to be a bit of a pushover, but she is given some powerful moments where her character explodes and gets exploded at. She is deceptively calm and then when she faces a crisis, we are wondering how she will react, and if she will ever fully self-destruct. McQueen is perfectly cool, and there is a great scene where the runaway couple emerges from a pile of trash that has been dumped along a gulch in a remote waste site. In this scene, we see him stand up, grab the bag of money and his rifle, then move off with MacGraw as only he can. Nothing rumples him. In fact, nothing rumples this movie. It's as crisp as a new twenty-dollar bill.

I believe that this is 'Steve' being 'Steve!' I don't believe that there was even any discussion as to who would star in this movie...anymore than there was the chance that Steve McQueen had to test for the role.As in most of Steve McQueen's 'anti-hero' roles ("Soldier In The Rain;" "Baby, The Rain Must Fall;" "The Cincinnati Kid;" "The Sand Pebbles;" "Bullit;" etc.), this role fit him like a glove...and, even better than the others, as with this movie, the sky was the limit! Steve could be as bad as he wanted to be - and, the badder the better! This has to be the best bank robbery, shoot-em-up film ever made (this, and, "The Wild Bunch"), both directed by Sam Peckinpah.Teaming Steve McQueen with director Sam Peckinpah was as monumental as teaming Lennon and McCartney; Stewart and Fonda; Tracy and Hepburn; or, Bogie and Bacall! It was magic!I saw this at the theater in 1972 with my Dad, and, it hasn't lost anything over all of those years.It's simply a great, dramatic, and, realistic movie!

As this film ably demonstrates, literally and symbolically, if you aim a shotgun at a big enough target, you're gonna hit something. This film takes a lot of the more controversial and distasteful aspects of "The Wild Bunch" and "Straw Dogs" and presents them devoid of all philosophical content. It's a triumph of style over substance. I get it -- in 1972, McQueen and Peckinpah were both in need of a box-office hit. So they got Ali McGraw, who can't act to save her life but manages to get halfway there in this film, and off they go on a crime spree. Author David Weddle noted in his book on Peckinpah that the director made off with about $500,000 at the end of the day -- the same amount McQueen and McGraw's characters made from the heist. Fitting.It's not a "bad" movie.... the performances are underwhelming, pretty much all around (Ben Johnson disappears too quickly to make much more than an impression), but the action scenes are compelling and the suspense is strong. The story does not make a lot of sense.... for example, Johnson's character is sitting there in the house with all that loot just waiting for McQueen, under the assumption that McQueen's wife is going to betray him. This powerful, cynical man had no back- up plan whatsoever? Time and again, Peckinpah puts pedal to the metal and blasts right through story and character logic, but we don't mind too much.It's sort of a high-class drive-in movie.... not quite as much mayhem as "Gone in 60 Seconds", but close. McQueen and McGraw are a super sexy couple, and there's an amusing (although sadistic) side story with Sally Struthers and the suitably disgusting Al Lettieri. It's the sort of film Jack Hill would make if he had a bit more money; the stuff that Tarantino fans' dreams are made of.