Getaway

For an action thriller predicated on so much horsepower, Getaway runs out of gas pretty quickly.

It’s basically a feature-length car chase in which a man tries to rescue his kidnapped wife from her anonymous abductor. But the true star of the film is the resilient Shelby GT500 Super Snake that he navigates through crowded urban streets at high speeds, with plenty of engine revving and tire squealing to excite muscle-car aficionados.

The simple premise is staged during one night in Bulgaria (for reasons hilariously unexplained), when a disgraced former race-car driver (Ethan Hawke) is contacted by a mysterious man (Jon Voight) who has kidnapped his wife, saying only that he must steal a car and follow his instructions to keep her alive.

Not long afterward, he reluctantly accepts a passenger in a obstreperous young computer hacker (Selena Gomez) who becomes a pawn in the cat-and-mouse game. So the driver tries to solve the villain’s motives and whereabouts leading to the inevitable climactic showdown.

Director Courtney Solomon (An American Haunting) naturally keeps the pace as fast as possible through a combination of frenetic editing and slick stunt sequences (with the stunt crew deserving a tip of the cap for their efforts). His ploy is to throw enough explosions and car crashes on the screen to distract moviegoers from pausing to consider the film’s complete lack of narrative logic.

However, the screenwriters fail to realize that in order for their concept to work, they must either develop some suspense or empathy for the characters. Or at least have a sense of humor, for crying out loud. Instead, the characters in Getaway are so off-putting that the main concern for viewers will be whether the car survives all the mayhem, or at least whether insurance will cover all the damages.

The repetition is disrupted by a cool chase scene near the end shot almost entirely from the driver’s point of view, like a video game. By then, most audience members will have emotionally checked out.

Meanwhile, Voight collects an easy paycheck in a role that requires only that he adopt a vague Eastern European accent, sip on martinis and grow facial stubble.

In this age of aggressively shameless product placement, Getaway should at least ensure a sales boost for Shelby sports cars among those in higher income brackets. That seems to be the point anyway.

Rated PG-13, 94 minutes.