Roger Donaldson's The Getaway is that rare example of a remake that actually manages to steal a lot of the revered original's thunder. No mean feat given the fact that said original from 1972 featured superstar of the day Steve McQueen in front of the camera and the estimable Sam Peckinpah behind it. But the proof is right there in the pudding. With original writer Walter Hill (who culled the story from a Jim Thompson novel) and original producer David Foster at his side, Donaldson, wisely hewing to the original's sound narrative beats, has fashioned a first rate, text-book example of a lean, mean and muscular contemporary crime thriller. Exuding some of McQueen's coiled charisma, Alec Baldwin is well cast as the pragmatic, short-fused, newly-paroled Doc McCoy who, along with his wife Carol (Kim Basinger) and a suitcase full of stolen money, litters his escape route to Mexico with enough shell casings and blood-soaked corpses to make Peckinpah - were he still around - sigh with approval. Michael Madsen, James Woods and David Morse are suitably lethal as just some of the furies hot on Doc and Carol's trail. Highly recommended.
