Film / The Getaway (1972)

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The Getaway is a 1972 crime drama film directed by Sam Peckinpah, starring Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw. It was based on the novel of the same name by Jim Thompson. Walter Hill wrote the screenplay.

Gordon "Doc" McCoy is denied parole after serving four years of a ten-year sentence for armed robbery. Having had enough of jail, he gets his wife Carol to approach Benyon, a crooked politician. Carol secures Doc's release in a way that Doc later does not approve of at all. Newly freed Doc is given a job by Benyon: rob a certain small-town bank. Doc, Carol, a thug of Benyon's named Rudy, and a Red Shirt thug pull off the bank robbery, but not without spilling some blood. As is usual with bank robberies in the movies, the criminals start turning on each other, and Doc and Carol wind up having to flee from Benyon's goons and the law both.

A remake, directed by Roger Donaldson and starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, was released in 1994.

Not to be confused with the third-person video game series, or the pinball table The Getaway: High Speed II, or the 2013 film Getaway.

Tropes seen in the film:

• Action Girl: Carol, who helps with the robbery and who isn't afraid to pick up a gun and start shooting during the climactic firefight.
• Adaptational Alternate Ending: The final chapter of the book sees Doc and Carol 'escape' to a strange Mexican territory which subjects its criminal guests to ironic torments—they are forced into cannibalism, for instance, in mockery of how they metaphorically fed off of other people when they committed crimes to fund their lavish lifestyles—and is heavily implied to be Hell. In both of the movies, that ending is omitted.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Fran falls for Rudy almost instantly, finding him much more sexy and exciting that her milquetoast veterinarian husband.
  • Possibly because of Lima Syndrome (on the part of Rudy, only towards Fran) and Stockholm Syndrome (on the part of Fran, towards Rudy), making this A Match Made in Stockholm.
  • To a lesser extent with Doc and Carol. Although the two are genuinely in love and Happily Married, the bottom line is, Doc is a bank robber and this is probably a huge part of his appeal to Carol.
• Ambiguous Ending: The film ends with Doc and Carol driving to Mexico, safe from their enemies but their marriage still on the rocks. It's left unclear what will happen to them or if their relationship will survive.
• Anti-Hero: Not only is Doc a bank robber, he hits his wife (albeit after learning she slept with another man to get him out of jail). About the only good thing that can be said of him is that unlike just about every other character in the movie, including Carol, he doesn't kill unless he has to.
• Bait-and-Switch: Doc goes to Benyon his share of the money. As they talk, Benyon tells him about his and Carol's liaison and insinuates that he has been set up for an ambush. All the while, we see Carol walking into the room, gun drawn. . .but she shoots Benyon, not Doc. Though there is a moment where they aim at each other, frozen in shock and horror.
• Bank Robbery: A crooked politician hires Doc to rob a bank.
• Bathroom Brawl: Doc finds the thief who stole the bag of cash hiding in the bathroom on the train, and beats him up before reclaiming the bag.
• Beta Couple: Fran and Rudy, who hook up while Rudy is chasing after Doc and Carol (and kidnapping Harold and Fran).
• Big Guy Rodeo: Fran leaps on to Doc's back and flails at his head till Carol pulls her off and knocks her out.
• Bleed 'Em and Weep: Carol is shell-shocked after she kills Beynon.
• Bound and Gagged: Rudy leaves Harold bound to a chair (but not gagged) in the bathroom while he has sex with Fran in the next room.
• Briefcase Full of Money: After Benyon is killed, Doc and Carol are left with the bag containing all of the cash from the dog track robbery and being pursued by Rudy, Benyon's gang and the police.
• Bulletproof Vest: Doc realises that Rudy is attempting to betray him and shoots him several times and leaves him for dead. He survives thanks to his bulletproof vest.
• The Cameo: You can't see him, but that's James Garner driving the orange VW that Doc and Carol zoom past while fleeing the bank robbery.
• Closest Thing We Got: The injured Rudy drives to a veterinarian's house for help.
• Cut Phone Lines: Doc uses an explosive charge to take out both the power and the phone lines at the dog track.
• Dead Man's Trigger Finger: One of Benyon's goons (who is the only one carrying an automatic weapon, a sub-machine gun) gets blown away by Doc early in the final confrontation and the man squeezes off what remains of the magazine as he keels over dead.
• Disney Villain Death: Doc kills a man this way, shooting the elevator cables out so that the crash breaks every bone in his body when the elevator crashes to the bottom.
• Double Tap: Doc decides to finish off Rudy after the latter tried to kill him and Doc already seemingly shot him dead (he recommended to the whole heist crew to carry a Bulletproof Vest but Rudy refused then decided to wear it anyway), but he misses the head shot and the chest shot that bled and convinced Doc Rudy was finished was to the shoulder, leaving Rudy alive and raring for revenge.
• Driven to Suicide: Poor Hal. Being tied up and Forced to Watch your wife having vigorous sex with a criminal will do that to a guy.
• Drives Like Crazy: Carol.
• Dumb Blonde: Fran in the original, and how.
• Emasculated Cuckold: Fran and Rudy do this to her husband Hal in thoroughly humiliating fashion, with Fran fawning over Rudy the second she meets him, even though he's an escaped criminal having taken them hostage, and him immediately bullying Hal and ordering him around. By the time they actually have sex in front of him, it's his breaking point and he hangs himself.
• Fake Shemp: An extra playing Bo Hopkins' corpse. After he was shot, a stunt man did the roll from the car, and the extra was on the pavement as the police cars drove up and the kids looked on.
• Garbage Hideout: Doc and Carol jump into a dumpster to evade detection by the cops.
• Groin Attack: During the robbery, Rudy shoots Frank in the groin and kicks him out of a moving car, killing him.
• Happily Ever Before: The film omits the final chapter of the book.
• Imagine Spot: Doc and Carol visit a park after he gets out of prison and he imagines them jumping into the lake for a swim.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After hanging all over and flirting with Rudy, sleeping with him right in front of her husband, then not having the slightest bit of remorse after he kills himself, Fran is left alone and devastated—and stranded in a strange town miles from home when Rudy himself is killed.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Carol wears a blouse open to the navel—it doesn't even have any buttons—to get Benyon to get Doc out of jail.
• No Honor Among Thieves: Rudy kills Frank, which might be understandable as Frank had screwed up the plan and shot the guard. Then he tries to kill Doc and take all the money, but Doc is a quicker draw and shoots Rudy. Then it turns out that Benyon was going to have Carol kill Doc—but Carol shoots Benyon instead.
• Off-into-the-Distance Ending: Doc and Carol, driving off down a dusty Mexican road, having escaped the law and bought the truck from the cowboy for $30,000.
• Outlaw Couple: Doc and Carol.
• Pants-Positive Safety: After shooting Rudy, Doc loads a fresh clip into his pistol and then shoves it down the front of his pants as he and Carol head for the car.
• Performance Anxiety: Doc and Carol are understandably nervous about making love after he gets out of prison.
• Pervy Patdown: Benyon's henchman is clearly enjoying frisking Carol. Plus, she's in a skimpy, skintight dress, so it's already obvious that she's not carrying a weapon.
• Phallic Weapon: Fran is not at all subtle when she tells Rudy that he doesn't need to point a gun at her, she'll do anything he wants, while she fondles the barrel of said weapon.
• Pipe Pain: On waking up and discovering Doc has taken his weapons, Rudy rips a pipe out of the wall under the sink and goes after Doc.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Thompson's novel included a surrealistic, controversial ending in which Doc and Carol end up in a weird hotel that seems to actually be Hell. The movie got rid of that ending for a more conventional one in which Doc and Carol actually do get away.
• Prisoner's Work: The opening credits montage showcases Doc's prison routine, which includes him working on a license plate line.* Romanticized Abuse: Fran has sex with Rudy, the man who kidnapped her and her husband while the latter is locked in the adjacent bathroom and forced to listen, which drives him to commit suicide.
• Run for the Border: Amazingly, unlike how this usually turns out in crime dramas, Doc and Carol make it, given a lift out of a jam and across the border by a genial cowboy.
• Screaming Woman: It becomes plain that Fran is over her head during the climactic shootout, as Rudy, Doc & Carol, and Benyon's goons are shooting up both a hotel and each other. Doc punches her to shut her up, while in the remake, it's Carol who does this.
• Setting Update: The novel was set in the 1940s, while the film is set in its respective contemporary times.
• Sex for Services: How Carol got Beynon to spring Doc from prison. Given the Navel-Deep Neckline blouse she wore to the meeting, this seems to have been her plan all along, rather than Scarpia Ultimatum.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Doc's weapon of choice. When he sees that some cops have shown up, he hurriedly buys a shotgun from a conveniently nearby gun store, then shoots up the cop car and escapes.
• Shower of Love: In the remake, the McCoys make their reconciliation official by having one of these that eventually moves to its proper location—a bed.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Fran dies in the novel.
• Stealing from the Till: Why Benyon wanted Doc to rob that particular bank, he'd been cooking his books. Doc figures this out around the time that the news reports $750,000 stolen when he only has $500,000 in his bag.
• Tae Kwon Door: Rudy slams Gollie's head into the closet door before throwing him on to the bed and sticking a gun in his mouth.
• This Isn't Heaven: In the book, Doc and Carol have the goal of escaping to a Mexican territory called 'The Kingdom of El Rey,' which is known as a safe haven for criminals; lawbreakers can live there without fear of being arrested. In the end, they get there and find that the kingdom is styled as a resort where they can indeed live freely in luxurious accommodations, and they're overjoyed. Except those accommodations cost money, they only have what they brought with them, and with all the jobs being filled by locals, the only way to get more money is to open a joint account with someone and then murder that person. Given the consequences for running out of money are horrific, Doc and Carol—like all the other criminals there—soon find themselves living as scantily as possible to preserve their rapidly dwindling assets, neglecting their luxurious accommodations and hiding in their homes so as not to be killed, and desperately scheming to trick people into opening joint accounts with them so they can murder those people and prolong their lives a little longer—all while knowing every single other guest there is an equally ruthless criminal trying to do the same thing to them. For all that it looks heavenly, from the outside, the kingdom is heavily implied to be Hell, and neither Doc nor Carol can escape.
• Toplessness from the Back: Some fanservice from Carol. Doc's nervous about their first time in four years.
• Tuckerization: When the police pull up to Jackson's body, the cross street is Hopkins Street. Jackson was played by Bo Hopkins.
• Villain Protagonist: Doc and Carol are bank robbers, but presented as the heroes to the point where the viewer is actively rooting for them to get away.
• Would Hit a Girl: Doc slaps Carol not once, but several times, after finding out that she had sex with Benyon to get Doc out of jail. He also hits Fran to shut her up in the original.