Director: David Twohy
Starring: Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich & Timothy Olyphant
An entertaining thriller with a better than average cast though with a third act twist that fails to live up to the suspense leading up to it yet still enjoyable.
After achieving success, both critically and commercially, in 2000 with the low-budget Sci-Fi film Pitch Black, which also launched the career of Vin Diesel, director David Twohy has since failed to truly live up to the potential he displayed in his debut for crafting effective thrillers. With the little seen thriller Below, in 2002, and the Box-Office flop of the big budget sequel to Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick, in 2004 Twohy has finally returned to film after a five year absence with the effective if unimpressive thriller A Perfect Getaway.
Cliff (Zahn) and Cydney (Jovovich) are a newly-married couple on their honeymoon hiking in Hawaii. After avoiding picking up a pair of hitchhikers, Cleo and Kale (Chris Hemsworth and Marley Shelton), Cliff and Cydney arrive at the beginning of the hiking trail and after some assistance from a fellow hiker named Nick (Olyphant), they learn about the murder of a married couple on another Hawaiian island with the suspects being a couple, a man and a woman. Finding Nick is travelling with his girlfriend Gina (Kiele Sanchez) and isn’t shy about demonstrating his Special Forces experience along the trail, Cliff and Cydney are immediately suspicious though the arrival of Cleo and Kale on the trail adds further suspects. Fearing that they may be in the presence of the killers from the other island, Cliff and Cydney continue the trail in Nick and Gina’s company whilst trying to gather evidence to confirm their suspicions.
While developing a fairly standard ‘Are they? Aren’t they?’ set up with its main storyline over whether either of the couples Cliff and Cydney encounter could be killers or not littering the story with several potential clues and/or red herrings to keep audiences guessing, A Perfect Getaway does manage to remain fairly tense and quite entertaining at least during the first hour of the film. There are several aspects to the film which help make the film more enjoyable than it should be. Firstly is the relative likeability of its cast. Casting Steve Zahn, a talented and underrated actor, as one of the main leads adds a little more interest in our main characters and Milla Jovovich in a far perkier, likeable persona than the usual video-game based action films in which she is usually cast, makes her performance more enjoyable than many of her previous roles. Timothy Olyphant also entertains as the rather gung ho, ex-Special Forces, character of Nick, one of the film’s potential suspects for the killer. Also adding to the film’s enjoyment is a fairly punchy script which despite the occasionally annoying attempts to be self-referential with characters pointing out how events might play out if this were a film, mostly entertains especially in regards to Nick. The location of the film, on a remote Hawaiian island, means the film can rely on many shots of the island to impress. However, the final act does not live up to the build up with an over-extended flashback required to explain it before the film descends into the usual stalk and slash formula of many horror/thriller films that have come before.
As mentioned before, A Perfect Getaway succeeds more than it should on its casting. Zahn and Jovovich both give good performances during the film’s first hour as the tension builds up in the story. Zahn is suitably nervous yet smart and likeable and Jovovich’s perkiness is endearing. Timothy Olyphant steals the film though with his performance as Nick. In his most enjoyable performance since the end of the TV series Deadwood and demonstrating an enjoyable balance of fun and danger in his character that has barely be seen by the actor since Go in 1999, Olyphant is highly entertaining. Whether his character turns out to be a killer or not is almost irrelevant as his character’s gung-ho “American Jedi” personality and frequent war stories entertain throughout. Kiele Sanchez is also very likeable as Nick’s girlfriend, and potential partner-in-crime, Gina who also manages to be charming and capable of looking after herself.
Overall, while mostly following formula and with a final act that strains believability, A Perfect Getaway is still a perfectly entertaining thriller featuring likeable performances from Zahn, Jovovich and Sanchez and a very enjoyable, and film-stealing, performance from Timothy Olyphant.
Rating: 3/5
