Warning: This review contains mild spoilers.
A Perfect Getaway is an example of a movie that's set up almost entirely so that it can shock you with its twists and turns. That sort of thing can be fine if it's done well and doesn't detract from the rest of the movie. Unfortunately that's not the case here; what could have been an completely intellectually stimulating film as well as being an occasionally thrilling one, only really ends up being the latter.
A Perfect Getaway follows a newly-wed couple (Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich) who decide to go on an adventure holiday for their honeymoon on one of the Islands of Hawaii. Once on the island, packed and ready to head out on their trail hike, they hear wind of the news that some murders have taken place on one of the islands and the authorities are looking for a man and a woman as suspects. Whilst on the trail, the couple meet two other couples of whom they start to become suspicious.
This is a film almost ruined by its marketing, with the trailers, in particular, giving away a lot of the best bits, as well as hinting at a possible twist. Unsurprisingly these best bits are the thriller elements, at which the film exceeds pretty well when the "action" kicks fully into play. Unfortunately any surprise or shock value the twists and turns have (one huge one in particular, which I obviously won't give away) is lost when you know they're going to be there. The film feels like it's desperately trying to hide the fact that something surprising is always around the corner, masking that with overly-long and frankly needless scenes. There's character development and then there's overindulgence. No prizes for guessing which one A Perfect Getaway represents.
The two leads, played by Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich, are instantly likable and very much characters we can root for right from the beginning. They're thrown into a situation that ultimately gets beyond their control, and throughout the movie there's an interesting dynamic between our main couple, who represent the "sweet and innocent," and the twp other couples whose motives are suspect. The other couples are played by Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez (who some may know as Nikki from the TV show Lost), and Chris Hemsworth and Marley Shelton. The latter two are hardly seen in the film, and seem to represent the more dubious of the two "other couples." Olyphant and Sanchez become main players in this tale of tension.
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