The Getaway (1972)

The Getaway (1972)
Steve McQueen – Doc McCoy
Ali McGraw – Mrs. McCoy
Director: Sam Peckinpah


I have to get two things out of the way out of the way right off the bat. First, I think Steve McQueen is the coolest cat to ever come out of Hollywood. Second, I don’t like Sam Peckinpah’s treatment of women in his films. These two things provided a major conflict for me in The Getaway. In the end, my hatred for the director won out. Peckinpah was always better than most at portraying vivid characters. Unfortunately, he was at his absolute best when he got the chance to show women who allowed themselves to be physically and emotionally dominated; reveled in it even. In Peckinpah’s world, women respond only to men that dominate them, emotionally and physically. His films highlight women that are willing to put up with being slapped around and beaten, and will even gleefully leave men that treat them with adoration and respect for violent men. The audience is treated to scene after scene featuring a criminal and a couple he kidnaps. The wife falls for the kidnapper. That is not necessarily bad, but in nearly every scene the husband is tied up and forced to watch his wife have sex with the criminal. After a while, it goes from merely showing a counterpoint to the McCoy’s marriage, to just being gleeful in showing such cruel behavior.

In this film, the woman who has a husband who is respectful and nonviolent leaves her husband for a criminal. That husband is so traumatized by what his wife does, and what he is forced to witness, that he hanged himself. The implication is that the husband is weak and impotent. Mrs. McCoy, who is slapped around by her significant other and can’t even trust him because he is a criminal who spent years in prison, fights tooth and nail for her marriage. In the beginning, she sleeps with a politician to get her husband out of prison. Through the movie, Doc McCoy struggles with this infidelity, an infidelity that he essentially asked her to commit. Yet the wife calls him weak for not getting over it. Once he gets over her infidelity, despite being killers and robbers, and having a relationship based in domestic violence, they manage to save their marriage.

This aspect of all Peckinpah films leads to a problem: The Getaway is obviously supposed to be about a husband and wife who don’t trust each other because of all the problems that go wrong on the heist, not to mention the fact that the wife sleeps with a politician to get her husband out of prison. This is what the book on which this film was based was about. It would have been an interesting relationship to see explored. Instead, because of Peckinpah’s portrayal of how he views a natural relationship between a man and woman to be, the suspicion comes through as something every husband and wife experience, rather than events criminals go through. Hence, it doesn't add any tension to the film, and isn't even explored that much.

Despite all of this, if the movie had any redeeming qualities, it may have been easier to handle than it was. I have always enjoyed films with bank heists and wild chases across the country. Combining this with Steve McQueen seems like a fail-safe recipe for an exciting film. Unfortunately, the film is saddled with a lazy script, rife with plot holes and inconsistencies. After an hour, I didn’t care who lived and who died, just as long as it ended as soon as possible. The key problem is that it wants to portray Doc McCoy as an elite bank robber, but time after time his actions show him to be a foolish amateur. At one point he shows that he is aware that the people chasing him know which hotel he is heading for, yet he goes there anyway. Even worse, when he and his wife get there, he acts as if he isn’t aware of the danger he is in at all. Time after time, problems occur, all of them his own making. He shows absolutely no remorse over killing people, yet after having one guy he failed to kill come back to haunt him, he chooses not to kill him again. As you have probably guessed, this guy comes back once more. His stupid mistakes indicate lack of experience; not the type of a guy people hire to steal money for them. In the end, I think this film would have worked better as a comedy filled with a series of hilarious high jinks revolving around a fumbling, incompetent bank robber. I doubt I could laugh any more at his incompetence than I did tonight.

On a side note, this review took me two hours to write. At one point, I told my husband how difficult it was, and he said it should be easy, and that I just needed to write “It sucked.” Part of me thinks that it may have been better to go with that.