I’ve noted before that as the years have passed, I’ve grown far more mellow regarding my opinion of films.  There used to be a time I was a ruthless critic and would search for, and find, the least little problem with any given film and expose it to the world (well, my friends), as if doing so somehow proved the “wonderful” film was anything but.

Yet today, I cut films a hell of a lot more slack.  I liked R.I.P.D., for christsakes!!!

But then along comes a movie that so misses its mark and so pisses me off that I can’t help but be enraged by the wasted opportunity, especially when said film starts off so well before going off the rails so completely.

Getaway is just such a film.

During its opening fifteen to twenty five minutes, this movie worked.  Having heard all kinds of bad things about this film, I was optimistic.  Perhaps the critics were wrong, and this film might turn out to be good.

And then Selena Gomez appeared and it all went downhill from there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking Ms. Gomez as an actress.  Its just that she was horribly -and I mean horribly– miscast in this film.  There isn’t one second that passes where she looks like she belongs here.  For that matter, Ethan Hawke, who plays the movie’s protagonist, didn’t look all that great, either.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The film opens, as I said before, quite well.  We see a shadowy individual (it turns out to be Ethan Hawke) entering his apartment and realizing that a mighty struggle has occurred and that his wife is missing.  This man, we come to find, is named Brent Magma.

Seriously.

Brent -or should I call him Magma (come on, that name is a joke, right?!)- is to do what the caller says or his wife dies.  Magma (giggle) is sent to a parking garage and there he finds a super sweet silver colored Shelby Super Snake Mustang.  It is loaded with cameras and the mysterious caller tells Magma (really, that’s his name) that he is to steal this car and drive around and do what he tells him to.

Magma starts tearing through Bulgaria (did I mention that for some reason *coughcheaperfilmingexpensescough* he lives there?) with the police hot on his tail.  Turns out Magma was a professional circuit driver who washed out, so riding around in this screaming Mustang isn’t entirely out of his *ahem* wheelhouse.

So far, other than the weird setting and Magma’s name, all is well enough.

And then, during a stop from the mayhem, Selena Gomez’s “The Kid” appears.  That’s her character’s name.  Perhaps the film makes felt they had come up with such an awesome, senses shattering name with Brent Magma that there was no need to give Ms. Gomez’s character a name at all.

Anyway, The Kid opens the Mustang’s passenger door (Magma foolishly left it unlocked) waving a gun and demanding he give her back her car.

You read that right (oh, and by the way, SPOILERS!), this screaming Mustang is The Kid’s car!

Now, this is where the whole plausibility thing starts to really go out the window.  Again, I have no animus against Ms. Gomez, and I know she was roughly twenty years old when this movie was made…but she looks like she’s fourteen.  It was just as impossible to view her as a threat to Magma, even while awkwardly waving her gun, and even more impossible to accept that she is the owner of this super car.

Anyway, Magma’s caller insist he take The Kid along with him and the two, of course, form your typical movie “odd couple”.  They bicker, they insult each other, yet you know they’ll eventually work together to free Magma’s wife while destroying the lovely streets of Bulgaria.

I could go on, but reliving this film is starting to depress me.  Just how lazily scripted is this thing?  At one point the duo take out -and by take out I mean nuke– a power plant yet for the remainder of this film as they drive through the city at night and there isn’t any section they pass through that doesn’t have lights!  And don’t get me started on how much damage this Mustang takes yet keeps going, or that idiotic “twist” at the end of the film…oh and…

Did I mention I was getting depressed?

If you do find yourself watching this film, check out the extended one take shot toward the very end of the film.  It is a front mounted camera that is supposed to represent a POV from Magma’s Mustang as he chases after a Mercedes van.  This shot goes on for something like two minutes and delivers more thrills in that time than the rest of the film did in its other 88 minutes.

As bad as the film is -and it is quite bad- that scene alone almost makes what came before bearable.