With help from his agent, actor Steve McQueen tries to find the iconic Ford Mustang GT 390 that he drove in the 1968 film ‘Bullitt.’”
I recently watched “The Getaway” for the first time. I’ve always been intrigued by Steve McQueen, he always seemed to be the ideal male action star of the late ’60s and early ’70s. “The Getaway” was written by Walter Hill and directed by Sam Peckinpah. It’s very macho (almost to a fault) and at times very violent. I appreciated the hard-boiled drama but it didn’t stick with me like other 1970s crime thrillers. Regardless, McQueen’s body of work speaks for itself. I was curious to see a biopic on his life but didn’t realize just how it would be.
Obviously, these are some massive shoes to fill but there’s a difference between embodying a role and having the right specifications. The lead, Andre Brooks, has the piercing blue eyes and curly blonde hair, but that’s about it. I feel zero charisma from him and his Canadian accent is jarring since McQueen didn’t have one. The gist of the story is basically McQueen wants the actual GT390 from his iconic film “Bullitt.” The car he was gifted isn’t the original model from the film only a prototype and even worse, it’s an automatic shift.
There’s lots of exposition which feels like it’s trying to remind you that it’s accurate. The writer hammers wildly with the story’s time and place like it’s begging to be taken seriously. There’s no natural flow to the characters’ conversations or the story. It all feels slapped together and the editing is terribly choppy.
The dialogue must have been done in post-production, maybe it’s not all ADR, but it didn’t sound natural. I feel like the director and production team spent so much time trying to create a sun-kissed retro feeling picture that they lost the heart and soul of the film. The director foolishly keeps the light overbearingly focused on his blue eyes and it feels so forced. So many takes are out of focus, and the crazy soft lighting on McQueen is one way, while the rest of the cast is so weirdly lit. The camera angles and shots are terribly composed. Everything feels overblown with some poor recreations of some of his most famous scenes. One scene, in particular, included an eye-rolling dance number that just really ruined my day. Awful movie, speed away from this at all costs, ideally, in a GT390.
Now playing in select theaters
