The Perfect Getaway (2009) - 3/4

'The Perfect Getaway' is a title with two meanings, one referring to the murderous couple who have found a clever means of escaping detection; the other the island paradise of Hawaii on which the murderers are occurring. You don't get a lot of Hawaii-set horror/thriller movies. I can only think of a the mediocre trash novel, Fires of Eden, by Dan Simmons. On the cover of the paperback, Stephen King's blurb is 'Dan Simmons writes like a hot-rodding angel.' Personally I think he writes like a gimpy sheep with cataracts. But I'm getting discombobulated here. The point is, Hawaii is a great place for horror, if only because it's so beautiful and innocent it really catches you off-guard. Thankfully David Twohy takes us into that rare territory.

We follow a couple, nerdy Steve Zahn and girly Milla Jovovich (we believe that, don't we?), as they decide to take a hike to a less accessible but truly unsullied portion of Hawaii for their honeymoon, anxiously aware of the presence of a psychotic couple on the island. Along the way, they give the slip to a trashy hitchhiking couple and becoming traveling companions of a rather intense ex-special ops man (Timothy Olyphant, doing an incredible job) and his girlfriend. The odder Olyphant's behaviour seems, the more suspicious are aroused that he just might be a murderer. But then again, maybe it's that trashy couple who seem to keep tailing them. From Zahn's skiddish point of view, it could be either one.

Even though most of the film is given from Zahn's and Jovovich's point of view, with Olyphant's point of view interjecting once towards the middle during Zahn's bathroom break, curiously I found myself wanting to spend the whole time with Olyphant. The screenplay is written in such a way as to make us see how Olyphant might well be intense and a bit intimidating, but at the same time he's nice and a really cool guy. Yet Zahn is perpetually unpleasant with him and telling Jovovich how creepy Olyphant and his girl are. Zahn's character comes off as a pampered, xenophobic jerk and Olyphant a genuinely interesting, friendly person who lives life his own way. Another curious thing is that I'm fairly certain this is intentional: we're supposed to be both attracted to Olyphant and slightly sharing Zahn's apprehensions; and we're supposed to see Zahn is a bit of a jerk, even while his concerns aren't unjustified. It's very clever writing.

Twohy is a screenwriter-director I've long respected. I adore The Arrival, possibly the most entertaining alien invasion movie ever made. There is little question that The Perfect Getaway is just as well-made as The Arrival in terms of narrative coherency, entertainment value, and visual power. There are a lot of beautiful moments, as well as fun references for the film buff. There are, however, some problems.

The big problem is a matter of narrative. When you have an omniscient narrator, information cannot legitimately be withheld. Any information an omniscient narrator has that occurs within the timespan of the story's action must be laid out before the audience. In order to withhold information, we must either remain entirely with one character, effectively limiting the omniscience; or the narration must be subjective. In literature, this would be first-person narration. In cinema, this is usually accomplished via a 'subjective camera'. As I mentioned, we do get both Olyphant's and Zahn's perspectives at some point, so we do have an omniscient narrator. This means Twohy is cheating. But it gets worse. For the big reveal in the film to work, those withheld elements have to be recalled as well as some events prior to the time the story begins. That's legitimate. The problem is that nobody is actually doing the recalling! The narrator just suddenly spills it out before you as exposition. Well, if it could do that all along, why didn't it do it at the beginning? Just to make the surprise. And that's cheating. You don't find that in Hitchcock's films.

I don't imagine for a moment I can teach David Twohy anything. But everybody makes mistakes and that's one he made: The Perfect Getaway has point-of-view problems. Is it very damaging for the film? No, not really. It's still an entertaining story told with style. I was particularly interested in how Twohy edited the climactic chase scene to include not just fast cutting, but even split-screen effects of the same shot to give a fractured, hyperkinetic feel to the action. I don't recall having seen that in any other film; however, I don't watch many action films.