The Perfect
Getaway
Wham! You’re right there in
beautiful Hawaii on the island of Wowie and a potboiler starts potboiling. Saddle Barebacker (Steve Zahn) and Blondie
Pubebleacher (Milla Jovovich) are a recently divorced couple on their honeymoon
celebrating their tenth anniversary with a true tropical adventure hiking
through the Hawaiian alps. They’re
hoping to get away from it all perfectly when along the hiking trail they meet
Ray Pist (Timothy Elephant) a sexually aggressive ladies man with a flexible
idea of forced consent. Ray takes them
to a secret mountain where eagles dare and hawks truth. It is there that they meet up with 
Ray’s special lady Pantywaist Broadhips
(Some Chick) and begin telling stories around the campfire.
Blondie reveals that she was an only child raised by orphans and
always dreamed of having a child of her own to finally cancel out her orphan
status. Saddle placates her and talks
about the perils of bringing a child into this economy. Nicholas Cage is discussed although he does
not appear in this film. The news that
there is a killer on island spooks the group and they immediately start
suspecting each other of suspicion.
Then the narrative hits the hornet’s nest and wasp bites
ensue. A thrilling car chase on foot leads
our group into a Mexican standoff of a deathmatch. What’s most important are the textures and
knowing that in knowing, you are truly naive, and that only an extended
blue-tinted flashback can fill in the decepiticonnery that has befell you
throughout besaid viewing of the aforementioned feature film, The Perfect Getaway (mentioned
again). The truth lies in the camcorder,
which cords the cam, but for whom?
The characters are all viewed in shades of doubt in the cold light
of an eclipse that is the mind’s eye. We
wonder if Ray really is the survivor an aviationistic disaster or if he’s just
posturing to impress the impressionable Saddle.
Saddle discusses his career as a filmscreenplay writer with aspirational
ambitions, but we can never be completely certain of his alleged success.
There
are definitely parts where this things seems like it is trying to go for some
self-aware type of movie like Scream
in that the characters discuss movies of the thriller genre, when in fact, they
are characters in a thriller film. Darkness
falls across the land and the game is a foot when hand injuries complicate
stillmotion action sequences. Sequences
that bare consequences both for the characters and the viewers here at
home. Blood is shed in watershed moments
of bloodshed. I’m not sure how much of
this was because I was watching an unrated version of the movie, but some of
this shit is painful to watch. The movie
is constantly telling us what to watch for and sometimes rewards us with a
watching of its own. We are made to
wonder, why are her pupils dilated when his are as big as a frying pan in the
middle of an egg? Little stuff like that
keeps us on our toes on the edge of our seat.
Milla Jovovich gets to use her real life bimbo voice for a change
in this film, and it’s kinda funny. I
remember laughing at her valley girl speak during the Ultraviolet commentary track and remarked at how amazingly
competent she could sound in movies.
Here she gets to be her ditzy self.
Please
note, up until now I have been changing certain character names and obscuring
various plot developments because this is a twisty movie and I wanted to help
keep those things a secret so that when you see it you will enjoy it. I think that my way of hiding spoilers is
better than putting ugly black bars all over the fucking page and hope that
this is a real gamechanger in terms of how spoilers are handled throughout the
internet. I’ve even thrown in the odd
red snapper to completely throw you off the trail.
We’ve seen a lot of movies like this such as Into The Blue. Beautiful
people in peril, and bikinis! Trouble in
paradise! Etc etc etc... But this one
just keeps ratcheting up the tension like somebody has a ratchet on the tension
and they’re turning it up. It keeps
daring you to underestimate it giving you only a few obvious solutions to this
mystery and then making you second guess yourself or wonder if this movie is
going to pull something else completely out of its ass. They do the smart thing and bust the big
reveal out early enough on that you still get a rewarding film afterwards and I
thoroughly enjoyed this.
I’ll also note that this film is not a sequel to The Getaway, and to further complicate
things, The Getaway is a perfect
movie. It just doesn’t need to call
itself that in the title.
If you liked this (although I can’t
imagine you did) try reading this other shit:
Winner
of the lifetime disgrace award for Mila Jovovich.
Bloody Bird: A Film About an Owl that Kills
Actors with a Chainsaw
This film was also released as
“Stagefright”, “Deleria”, and “Aquarius”,
but you didn’t see it under those names
either.
After
years of adjusting his pants, is he ready to adjust The Goddess of Death?
This
is my special post-Oscar film analysis.