[7]

An ex-con and his wife are on the lam after a heist goes bad in this flick from Sam Peckinpah (Straw Dogs, The Wild Bunch). Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw star as the central couple. She has to sleep with supporting baddie Ben Johnson to get McQueen’s character released from prison, and when McQueen finds out about it at the movie’s mid-point, it makes for one of the film’s most interesting scenes. (I doubt any studio film today would dare engage its protagonist in spousal abuse.) Unfortunately, Johnson also insists McQueen and MacGraw participate in the ill-fated heist, in which one of the gang (Al Lettieri) decides to kill the others and run off with all the dough. Lettieri teams up with Sally Struthers and Jack Dodson, who provide a little comic relief, and chases McQueen and MacGraw throughout the rest of the movie.

The Getaway is a solid chase movie with a groovy Quincy Jones score and some unusual film editing. Peckinpah likes to show the aftermath of a scene before the build-up. This turns a character’s decision to do something into the climax of a scene, rather than the decision’s consequences — which seems thematically appropriate here. In addition to the mid-point rough-housing McQueen inflicts on MacGraw, I also really like a sequence in which the couple get stuck in a trash compactor and end up getting dumped in the middle of a desert. It’s the most visually striking scene in the film. And it’s also great to see Dub Taylor and Slim Pickens in supporting roles.