ViewGuide

Created Aug 09, 2009 11:44PM PST • Edited Mar 27, 2015 01:35AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Kick-ass and funny, clever and surprising, this adventure thriller delivers plenty of twists, turns and vistas. For audiences who like to be teased and challenged, this is old school. Hitchcock – the Master of Suspense himself – would have been proud.

   A Perfect Getaway suffers a bit from the self-conscious crafting of its suspense, and in having an essentially unlikable couple at its center. But these quibbles pale in comparison to the self-assured way David Twohy’s movie comes together, the terrific performances of its four leads, and its success in keeping its secrets until the very end.

   The Kauai setting works extremely well, though the notion of stone-cold killers in that island paradise seriously harshes the mellow.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Two couples dominate the proceedings. Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich prove themselves terrific actors, by turns dweeby, irritating and shockingly capable. Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez deliver more homogeneous performances, but are terrific nonetheless as a couple comfortable in their own skins and in the wild.

   The third couple are suitably menacing, especially he-man Chris Hemsworth, the future Thor come 2011.

   • Olyphant has become one of the best action actors working today. Good guy or bad, he’s got crazy eyes that convey just a bit more commitment than a sane man would bring to a fight. This works especially well here, given that you don’t know if he’s good or evil until the very end.
   • Zahn has the rare ability to play meek or macho.
   • Jovovich – with her long face and movie star profile – plays callow extremely well, but also has the litheness to play action.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Writer-Director David Twohy goes perhaps too film-school here, what with red herrings announcing themselves and one of the characters being a screenwriter. Yet the Hitchcockian story is plenty surprising, full of carefully crafted suspense, MacGuffins (e.g., the web image of the killers hanging just out of reach), ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, mistaken identity and likable criminals. Twohy should have given himself a cameo to make his homage complete.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Really Great 4.5

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    Kauai’s Na Pali Coast makes for unparalleled beauty, even if all the close up shots were filmed in Puerto Rico and Jamaica.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.1

    The violence is suitably raw and visceral, never more so than when a sympathetic heroine has to pull a knife out of her thigh. Ouch.

17. Sex Innocent 1.5

18. Violence Brutal 2.6

19. Rudeness Salty 2.3

21. Reality

    Glib 1.5

    The Hawaiians are understandably upset that this movie will create a paranoid vibe in their land of Hoaloha. Let’s hope that doesn’t come to pass.

    As it happens, my wife and I honeymooned exactly where the movie is set. We stayed in Hanelei Bay (shown in the early part of the movie), got shave ice from the vendor pictured, skinny dipped at Lumahai Beach (where the scary couple asked to be dropped off), and planned a three day hike along the Kalalau Trail. Heavy rains cut our Kalalau adventure down to just a day hike, which I don’t remember as being at all scary. No steep drops, no madmen, no dweebs. Just mellow paradise.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.9

23. Biological Glib 1.8

24. Physical Glib 1.6