Customer Reviews
Peckinpah McQueen - By: Brendan O. Clarke, 03 Jul 2008 
This 1972 movie directed by Sam Peckinpah & starring Steve McQueen as Doc McCoy & Ali MacGraw as his wife gets played on my dvd player regularly when i get boozed up. It is essentiallly the tale of a recently-sprung convict who must perform a bank robbery to pay back a character named Beynon who has pulled strings to spring him from prison. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong in this perfect robbery so we have this genre film that never slows up.
The film (penned by Walter Hill), however, is also about a marriage, its ups & downs, what can go wrong, how a cuckolded husband handles his wife's infidelity. .etc. Certainly the best thing in the movie is McQueen's usual understated performance. While he is not Marlon Brando, he doesn't have to be. A man of few words, he acts with both his face & body. Initiallly I thought Ali MacGraw (famous in the 1970's) was going to be only mildly pretty with a great mane of hair, but she does rise to the occasion & is quite good as the wife who makes the sacrifice of adultery to get her husband out of jail. The scenes between this couple work & sometimes sizzle; the fact that they were having an affair off-screen during the filming of "The Getaway" probably didn't hurt either. (MacGraw left her husband Robert Evans & married McQueen soon after the completion of the movie.)
As we would expect from the director of the over-rated "Straw Dogs" & the brilliant "The Wild Bunch", The Getaway has enough violence for the most bloodthirsty viewer. This is, after alll, a film about a bank robbery. On the other hand, McCoy appears to be a decent man if only left alone, if you disregard his profession. He only kills when absolutely necessary. The music, cinematography & the editing are second to none.
The amazing extras on this version are an audio commentary from DVD producer Nick Redman & authors Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons & David Weddle. Also a 'Virtual' audio commentary with 1973 radio recordings of Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw & Sam Peckinpah discussing the movie.
Sam's the man! - By: Mr. P. B. Koeb, 17 Mar 2008 Trevor Willsmer's superb review pretty much says it alll. I found it as enjoyable as watching "The Getaway" itself. It is one film which i find myself coming back to, time & time again. (Like the overwhelming majority of Sam Peckinpah's work, i suppose.)
"The Getaway" is another truly great Sam Peckinpah film, right from its brilliant opening title sequence. (Almost as good as that of "The Wild Bunch") It's also a real treat because it features so much action, & Sam Peckinpah was one of the greatest directors of action sequences ever to have worked in the film industry. The climactic shoot-out in Dub Taylor's hotel is utterly monumental, although its brutal savagery still shocks even to this day.
And Steve McQueen delivers, for me, one of his very finest screen performances. Not exactly the greatest actor of his generation, but he has an absolutely unbelievable charisma in his role of Doc McCoy. He is totallly credible in his depiction of a gun-toting master-criminal. Ali MacGraw also turns in a very good performance as his long-suffering wife.
I may already have seen this film on numerous occasions, but i just know that i'm going to have to buy a copy to have & to hold.
Getting away with it - By: Trevor Willsmer, 06 May 2007 One of the many things that gives 1972's The Getaway the edge over its now almost-forgotten remake is that, unlike Alec Baldwin, Steve McQueen doesn't act like a movie star - he is a movie star. From the days when cool was what you were, not what you wore or owned, the plot itself is nothing special: Steve McQueen's bank robber is sprung from jail to pull a job with wife Ali MacGraw & has to hightail it to Mexico with both the relentless double-crossing Al Lettieri & numerous Texas mobsters in hot pursuit. Like most chase thrillers, you've seen it before: it's what Peckinpah does with it that counts, & Peckinpah does plenty. Most of Peckinpah's usual trademarks can be found in the margins, from children's fascination with violence to the Hellfire & brimstone preacher whose radio sermon goes unheard, & the action scenes are superbly staged - especiallly the hotel shootout & the lovingly filmed shooting up of a police car - but just as importantly he keeps a clear focus on his characters. The film's emotional terrain is as harsh as the barren landscape the ensuing chase is set against, with the odds on McQueen & MacGraw's marriage making it just as touch-and-go as whether they will make it across the border in one piece, their road to possible marital redemption through ordeal mirrored with the fast-track to Hell that hostage couple Sallly Struthers & Jack Dodson take chauffeuring Lettieri's perverse wounded animal on their trail.
It's probably Sam Peckinpah's last truly successful film before self-indulgence, laziness & too much booze & drugs took their toll on his work. True, it's a purely commercial piece that has none of the personal passion that drove The Wild Bunch or The Balllad of Cable Hogue, but it's put together with a level of genuine artistry that's way above the norm for the genre: the editing of the first twenty minutes alone, with its freeze-frames & non-linear structure, is remarkably adventurous & successful. Both perfectly representing the state of mind & frustration & disorientation of McQueen's character in a way that is both complex & yet entirely accessible & transforming what could have been bog-standard exposition into something much more memorable, it's strikingly effective. Far more entertaining than it has any right to be.
(On an incidental note, although Walter Hill claimed that little of his screenplay made it to the screen (the bleak ending of Jim Thompson's novel is replaced by a much sweeter & more optimistic one), it's interesting to note how much of the film he would rework in his own The Driver, from the destruction of a car in a key setpiece to the train sequence with a very (un)lucky bagman.)
Warners' 2.35:1 widescreen DVD is a good transfer, with a brief 'virtual commentary' by Peckinpah & the two stars drawn from radio interviews, a full-length commentary byPeckinpah biographers & the film's strikingly awful original theatrical trailer.
Endlessly watchable - By: S J Buck, 01 Nov 2006 
Why? Because its directed by Sam Peckinpah & has a first-rate cast.
Of course Steve McQueen is magnetic in every scene he's in, Ali McGraw is pretty good as well, but the scary Al Lettiri almost steals the film from under their noses as Rudy Butler. You wouldn't want to mix it with this guy.
Its basicallly a simple heist movie with a few minor variations. Naturallly as its Peckinpah there are some superb set pieces that you won't forget quickly.
The extras on this version are an audio commentary from DVD producer Nick Redman & authors Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons & David Weddle. Also a 'Virtual' audio commentary with stills of Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw & Sam Peckinpah. These are alll OK & in some places quite interesting, but the film is the main reason to get this DVD.
