The Getaway (1972) - film review

Carter McCoy is serving a ten-year stretch in prison.  After he is refused parole, he sends his wife Carol to make a deal with crooked businessman Jack Benyon.  The latter springs McCoy’s release on condition that he takes part in a bank robbery.  McCoy agrees to Benyon’s terms and makes meticulous preparations for the hold-up.  Things soon go awry when McCoy’s partners in crime - Benyon’s hired thugs - turn treacherous.  Benyon repays McCoy by attempting to seduce his wife.  Although McCoy and Carol manage to make a swift getaway with the loot, their escape is far from certain.  Benyon is a formidable opponent and doesn’t give up that easily...

After their successful collaboration on Junior Bonner (1972), Sam Peckinpah and Steve McQueen immediately joined forces again to deliver one of the grittiest and most atmospheric action-crime movies of the 1970s.  The Getaway was an important departure for McQueen, allowing him to go beyond his familiar nice guy screen persona and portray a more complex kind of character, a flawed anti-hero of dubious morality.  Peckinpah is just as inspired by the film’s subject and, skilfully avoiding the clichés to which the heist movie was particularly prone at the time, crafts a film that is unremittingly tough and tensely unpredictable.  The Getaway makes few concessions to the sensibilities of its audience - it shows us the world of the hardened criminal as it should be shown, not as glamorous fantasy, but as something that is cold, ugly and brutal. 

McQueen’s solid performance is supplemented by some sterling contributions from a fine supporting cast - Al Lettieri is particularly chilling as the main villain of the piece.  The one casting let down is Ali MacGraw who, lacking even the rudiments of acting ability, fails to make her character remotely convincing and just looks like an unsightly sticking plaster on what might otherwise have been a faultless production.  Whilst the director’s stylistic touches (notably his trademark slow-mo killings and jarring editing) are sometimes an irritating distraction, Peckinpah is as focussed and uncompromising as ever, igniting the film with his customary energy and panache, whilst taunting us with his characteristically cynical assessment of human nature.   However, the main reason to watch The Getaway is to savour McQueen’s darkly introspective performance, which is without doubt one of his finest and most enigmatic.

© Alex Sullivan 2011

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