The Getaway

Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw and others chasing a bag of cash in Texas

A prisoner in Huntsville (McQueen) is released early due to his wife (MacGraw) making a deal with a corrupt official (Ben Johnson). The cost of his freedom is to head a bank heist in San Marcos with the officer’s questionable henchmen (Al Lettieri and Bo Hopkins). O, what a tangled web we weave.

“The Getaway” (1972) is a crime thriller written by Walter Hill based on Jim Thompson’s book and was director Sam Peckinpah’s second most successful film at the box office, after “Convoy” six years later. It was remade in 1994 with Alec Baldwin and influenced soon-to-come movies like “The Outfit,” "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry," "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" and “The Gauntlet,” as well as later ones like “No Country for Old Men.”

If you like those flicks, you’ll appreciate this one, although it ranks with the least of ’em IMHO. Why? Because the bank job is unnecessarily convoluted, not to mention expensive, with the myriad pre-caper photographs, a cliched last-minute briefing session in a basement, severing electrical cables in the sewer tunnels and even diversionary explosions. Why Sure! Then there’s the curious train station sequence with a convenient con man that’s inserted into the midsection, which I admit is entertaining in a Hitchcockian way.

Lastly, despite some amusing bits, the proceedings are shrouded by a pessimistic and ugly perspective. I get that the protagonists are antiheroes, but the film needed more glimmerings of nobility and love, and less murderous venality. “Pulp Fiction” is a good example.

Ali looks good on the feminine front and is, thankfully, way less annoying than her character in “Love Story.” Blonde Sally Struthers eventually appears and never looked better at 23 during shooting, but her character is a ditzy turnoff.

McQueen would marry costar MacGraw seven months after the movie’s release, but their marriage would only last five years.

It runs 2 hours, 2 minutes, and was shot entirely in Texas at Huntsville (prison), San Marcos (bank robbery), San Antonio (train station), Fabens (city street confrontation) and El Paso (Laughlin Hotel).

GRADE: B-/C+