The Getaway (1972)

          Beloved by many action-movie fans for its intense mixture of double-crosses, sexual intrigue, and violent showdowns, The Getawaywas a significant box-office hit for director Sam Peckinpah and star Steve McQueen, both of whom were at commercial crossroads after indulging themselves with financially unsuccessful passion projects. The Getaway is not, however, among the best movies either man made. Convoluted, sleazy, and sluggish, the picture has a few memorable moments, but events on the periphery of the main storyline often distract from the principal narrative.

          McQueen plays “Doc” McCoy, a career criminal whom we meet while he’s imprisoned. Realizing he’s unlikely to earn parole, Doc asks his wife, Carol (Ali MacGraw), to contact Jack Benyon (Ben Johnson), a businessman/criminal with political connections. Benyon gets Doc released in exchange for Doc’s promise to pull an elaborate job. Predictably, the minute Doc performs the crime, Doc and Carol realize they’ve been set up, so the bulk of the film comprises their attempts to escape Benyon’s ruthless minions and exact revenge.

          Peckinpah stages action in his usual style, blending frenetic cuts with lyrical slow-motion interludes, so scenes of guns-a-blazin’ mayhem have power; furthermore, screenwriter Walter Hill, adapting a novel by crime-fiction legend Jim Thompson, keeps things terse. Yet it’s hard to settle into the rhythms of the movie, partially because the lead characters are awful people—when Doc finds out Carol slept with Benyon to expedite Doc’s release, for instance, Doc slugs her—and partially because Peckinpah gets distracted by nonsense. In particular, the director wastes a lot of screen time on a subplot in which one of Benyon’s goons, Rudy (Al Lettieri), kidnaps a veterinarian and his wife, then seduces the wife in full view of the veterinarian, thereby deriving erotic glee from humiliating a nobody. (The wife is played by Sally Struthers, of All in the Family fame, in a screechy performance.)

          Perhaps the moment that best captures the excess of The Getaway is the bit during which Doc and Carol are dumped out of the back of a garbage truck—Peckinpah lingers on the image of two glamorous stars surrounded by junk as if it’s the height of cinematic irony. Were the entire movie not suffused with sludge, literally and metaphorically, this dramatic moment might have meant more; as is, it’s just one more unpleasant scene in a disposable movie. The Getaway was remade in 1994 with then-married stars Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger taking over the leading roles, but even with steamy sex scenes and a vivacious supporting performance by James Woods (as Benyon), the 1994 picture is no more a classic than the Peckinpah film.

The Getaway: FUNKY

Mr. Majestyk (1974)

          Despite his enviable literary reputation, Elmore Leonard’s output can get awfully pulpy, with his storied character flourishes and dialogue taking a backseat to humdrum, plot-driven violence. For instance, the Charles Bronson thriller Mr. Majestyk, which Leonard adapted from his own novel of the same name, has a few eccentric details—not many action heroes make their living growing watermelons, as the title character of this flick does—but in general the storyline is a compendium of chases, fights, and shoot-outs. So while the movie is enjoyable in an undemanding sort of way, it’s hardly memorable.

          As often happens in Leonard’s fiction, the narrative revolves around a self-suffiicient badass who’d rather avoid trouble but has no problem surmounting enemies if a hassle arises. Colorado watermelon farmer Vince Majestyk (Bronson) quarrels with local hoodlum Bobby Kopas (Paul Koslo), who wants Majestyk to hire Bobby’s workers so Bobby can earn kickbacks. Majestyk refuses, giving Bobby a humiliating beat-down to drive the point home, so Bobby presses charges and gets Majestyk arrested. Thus, Majestyk ends up on a prisoner-transfer bus with Frank Renda (Al Lettieri), a fearsome Mafia hitman. When Renda’s cronies assault the bus to rescue their pal, Majestyk hijacks the bus—with Renda inside—hoping to trade the convict for leverage with the police, because he wants Bobby’s trumped-up charges dismissed. Understandably, this behavior puts Majestyk on the bad side of bad people, so the aforementioned chases, fights, and shoot-outs ensue. (The movie also features a perfunctory love story between Majestyk and a Latino labor leader, played by Linda Cristal.)

          Bronson suits this material well, obviously, since he spent most of his career playing tight-lipped tough guys, but the movie’s impact would have deepened if Bronson had been pitted against more formidable opponents—the bad guys in Mr. Majestyk make so many foolish choices they seem like buffoons compared to the methodical title character. Director Richard Fleischer, as always, contributes impersonal but solid work that conveys the intensity inherent to Leonard’s story, and some of the action scenes are exciting, but it says a lot that the movie’s most dynamic scene is a vignette of mobsters annihilating a pile of watermelons with machine-gun fire.

Mr. Majestyk: FUNKY