Getaway

ACTION/ADVENTURE, SUSPENSE/THRILLER

Constant Chase

6.5 out of 10 | Rental

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Rated: PG-13 Intense action, violence and mayhem throughout, some rude gestures and language
Release Date: August 30, 2013
Runtime: 1 hour 30 minutes

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Director: Courtney Solomon
Writers: Sean Finegan, Gregg Maxwell Parker
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Selena Gomez, Jon Voight 

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SYNOPSIS:  Former race-car driver Brent Magna is pitted against the clock when his wife is kidnapped by a mysterious villain. He commanders a young woman's car and takes her on on a high-speed race against time.

REVIEW: Courtney Solomon is a third time director (An American Haunting, Dungeons & Dragons) who now looks to tackle a different type of monster - A Ford Mustang GT500 Shelby Super Snake! Written jointly by newcomers Sean Finegan and Gregg Maxwell Parker, try to pack a lot of horsepower into the span of 90 minutes.

Brent Magna (Ethan Hawke, Sinister) was a gifted race car driver who ended up believing all the hype about himself. After a crash he leaves the sports. When his wife is abducted from their home in Sofia, Bulgaria, Magna receives a phone call ordering him to steal a Ford Mustang  Shelby GT500 Super Snake from a parking garage and await further instructions or his wife will be killed. As he obeys the orders from the Voice (Jon Voight) in the dash, he endangers his life, the lives of pedestrians, and cause untold property damage and injury to the local police force. When a young woman (Selena Gomez, Hotel Transylvania) tries to take the car by gunpoint, she is overpowered and taken along for the ride to be part of the Voice's master plan. Magna must follow all instructions to a tee in order to have a slim possibility of being reunited with his wife. As Magna and 'The Kid' try to outrun the authorities and try to figure out the voice's plan, they stumbled upon important information and maybe a bargaining chip to help get Magna's wife back.

Take all the car chase movies you are familiar with – Bullitt, The Fast and the Furious, Smokey and the Bandit, and countless others – and roll them all into this 90 minutes of high octane pursuit. Throw in a bodiless menace with the upper hand, a la Colin Farrell's Phone Booth, and you have the outline of a film with miles of possibilities. After the first extended chase scene, many may have been on the edge of their seats or gripping the armrest with white knuckles. But as the movie revs on the chase sequences get repetitive and less interesting. There are only so many police cruiser car flips and cars ramping down stairs steps keep a person riveted. The mastermind voice keeps us curious as we try to unravel out what his scheme really is. But it doesn't have intricacy and planning to be as perfectly timed a plan that it could have been.

Ethan Hawke plays his down and out race car driver Brent rid of any acclaim through an accident, and left leading a unsavory life to make ends meet based on his skill set. The only thing that he finds redemptive is his wife who he adores above all each. That makes him easy prey for manipulation. On the other side of the coin is Selena Gomez's 'The Kid' who is a daddy's little rich girl throwaway who is educated at all the best schools, given material things instead of parental love, and just happened to be a genius with cars and computer hacking. All that seems random is connected as per the Voice's plan. Ethan Hawke can play this role to sleep, and it seems like he may have. Selena Gomez has yet to grow into an adult actresses, but her role as 'The Kid' doesn't put too much demand on her available talent.

Aside from the Voice behind the master plan and under the dash, the biggest character in the film is the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Super Snake itself. Lovers of muscle cars will be saddened to see the wear and tear that this Detroit Steel has to endure. It is a beautiful iconic thoroughbred that, in this film, is ridden hard and put away wet.

The director and cinematographer do give us a couple choice sequences that leads to gasps and some applause. Since the film is 90% car chase, it is difficult to come down to a lull from the intensity of any of the sequences. Two notable shots include a water runoff basin where one of the police cars slams into a pillar, lands in the water, and starts floating away, and when the Mustang is in pursuit of a vehicle and we see the chase in first person through the Mustangs headlamps. This last sequences that makes you feel like you are part of the film.

Getaway is the film to go see if you want to enjoy buttery popcorn bucket in a darkened theater, but the film strips the gears of cinematic car chases and intricate storytelling and puts this flick into neutral to most likely stall.

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The Purge

ACTION/ADVENTURE, SUSPENSE/THRILLER

One Day a Year, Crime is Legal

7.0 out of 10 | Matinee or Rental

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Rated: R  Strong disturbing violence and some language
Release Date: June 7, 2013
Runtime: 1 hour 25 minutes

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Director: James DeMonaco
Writers: James DeMonaco
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Lena Headley, Max Burkholder, Adelaide Kane, Edwin Hodge, Rhys Wakefield, Tony Oller, Arija Bareikis, Tom Yi, Chris Milkey, Tisha French, Dana Bunch

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SYNOPSIS:  A family is held hostage for harboring the target of a murderous syndicate during the Purge, a 12-hour period in which any and all crime is legalized.

REVIEW: Long-time screenwriter (Assault on Precinct 13) and short-time director (Little New York) James DeMonaco takes on a high concept suspense thriller story where crime has been legalized by the government for once a year during a 12-hour period.

James Sandin (Ethan Hawke, Before Midnight) sells high end home security systems. Business is booming ever since the United States government put into effect The Purge, an annual 12-hour suspension of law and order. The Purge allows for the temporary legalization of all crimes - up to and including murder. Unemployment is at an all time low of 1% and the economy is prospering. As James and his wife Mary (Lena Headey, Dredd 3D), seventeen year old daughter Zoey (Adelaide Kane, Goats), and son Charlie (Max Burkholder, NBC's Parenthood) prepare for securing their home for the annual event. As the first hour of the chaos begins, Charlie disarms the system long enough to let an injured Bloody Stranger (Edwin Hodge, Red Dawn) inside their home. As James tries to deal with the rescued intruder, he also has to contend with Zoe's forbidden boyfriend Henry (Tony Oller, Beneath the Darkness). Soon, a group of Purge hunters come to the home and demand that James bring out the homeless man - as is their right during the Purge - or they will break through the home's security system and kill them all. The Sandins have to decide whether to give up the rescued man or stand their ground against the Purgers. 

'Once a year, crime is legal'. It's the subtitle of The Purge, a high concept idea on par with John Carpenter's Escape from New York and In Time, with the familiar pinnings of 'trapped in house' themed films like The Strangers and The Last House on the Left. In Lord of the Flies, the deterioration of society results in anarchy and survival of the fittest. The annual Purge seems to be an excuse for the wealthy to thin the herd of undesirables like the homeless and disenfranchised. Of course unemployment would be at 1% when you hunt down and kill the homeless and lowlifes across the country with government approval.

What does it take for someone to resort to murder? Charlie asks his father why they do not take part in the annual Purge. James respond that they don't have an urge to kill anybody on the annual day with no restraint. Will they still share that same sentiment when the family is confronted with avid Purge hunters who come knocking at the door?

In the concept of legalizing chaos for one night, the story looks at what it takes to fundamentally change how a society thinks and acts. After years of the Purge being in existence, younger students are taught the meaning of the Purge, why it is so beneficial to the country, and why it is the right and just thing to do. When you change a society to think that murder is justified – even for one day – then you have changed society all together. Taboo is no longer taboo, responsibility is left at once doorstep as a take out weapons to fulfill their need to purge.

Ethan Hawke plays his role as father, provider, and protector as well as he did in last years Sinister. Lena Headey plays Mary like a woman who lives her life with an air of deserving. The Bloody Stranger who young Charlie rescues is both menacing and unpredictable. But the one who stands out the most is the Polite Stranger (Rhys Wakefield, Sanctum), a man so ingrained with the annual cleansing of the Purge that he has become an indoctrinated reveler who knows nothing else. His Ivy League charm, eloquent speech, and refined demeanor barely masked the privileged and snobby killer that lies just beneath the surface.

While the concept is high, the execution is less so. There are some twists and turns along the way that provides good frights and surprises, but mostly each kill - although striking and brutal - are somewhat expected. Somewhat formulaic, the film is not all paint-by-numbers. Although nothing spectacular, the suspense horror fan will find some entertainment in the film. Some of the kills even illicit cheers and jeers.

The Purge is a fine idea of the dystopian futures society, speculating on a single impossible government decision that is suppose to better society. What we end up with is a clever "trapped-in-a-house' suspense/horror/thriller that does not live up to the total cleansing that the purge implies.

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Sinister

Cost of Fame

★ ★ ★ out of 5 buckets | DVD

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Rated: R Some terror and disturbing violent images

Release Date: October 12, 2012

Runtime: 1 hour 49 minutes

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Director: Scott Derrickson
Writers: Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Juliet Rylance, Fred Dalton Thompson, James Ransone, Michael Hall D'Addario, Clare Foley

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SYNOPSIS: Found footage helps a true-crime novelist realize how and why a family was murdered in his new home, though his discoveries put his entire family in the path of a supernatural entity.

REVIEW: Writer and director Scott Derrickson has dabbled in the horror genre since the start of the millennium. Starting with the direct-to-video Hellraiser: Inferno and graduating to a theatrical suspense thriller release with The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Derrickson returns with a new co-writer C. Robert Cargill for another found-footage film that combines the mystery of a series of grisly murders with the unbelievable truth of the supernatural.

True-crime novelist Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke, Daybreakers) moves his wife Tracy (Juliet Rylance, Animal) and their two children Trevor (Michael Hall D'Addario, People Like Us) and Ashley (Clare Foley, Win Win) into the crime scene home where four members of a family were brutally hung on a tree in the backyard and the daughter was abducted. Shunned by the local Sheriff (Fred Dalton Thompson, Secretariat) and his Deputy (James Ransone, The Next Three Days), Ellison settles in to his office to try to write another true-crime novel that mirrors the success of one of his earlier successful works, 'Kentucky Blood'. When Ellison takes boxes up to the attic, he finds a box with a film projector and several cans of 8mm films with titles like 'BBQ' and 'Hanging Around'. Curious, he runs through one of the films to discover that the film has both a family enjoying a day filled with sun and a game of football catch, and the capture of the actual hanging of the Stevens family a few dozen feet in the direction of the backyard and the massive tree with a fallen branch still semi-attached to the tree. As Ellison watches more of the film, he realizes that the crime he was planning to write his next book about has expanded into a series of grisly family murders that all include the abduction of one of the children, and possibly the inclusion of a serial killer, the occult, or the supernatural.

On the poster, Sinister is billed as being from the producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious. And echoes of both films are evident in Sinister. Insidious offered odd angles and off-centered shots to add haunting body into a otherwise normal everyday house. Paranormal Activity ramped up the use of found-footage to creepy effect. Sinister combines ideas from both concepts to take a father and husband's journey to regain control for the health and well-being of his family down a dark road that may not have a way back.

As Ellison watches more 8mm frames to support his new-found theory that several families were killed by the same mad man, he discovers a distinctive mark at each of the crime scenes that leads him to a specialized occult crime professor that relays to Ellison that the painted mark at the crime scenes refer to a Babylonian deity named Bughuul. What starts off as a creepy voyeuristic study into a man's obsessive pursuit for former glory and worth becomes a typical supernatural story with a boogeyman at its center. The house that the Oswalt family moves into carries with it an innate sense of dread based on the happenings of its former residents. The finding of the 8mm films and projector only adds to the suspense and gruesome anticipation. The boogeyman named Bughuul a.k.a. Mr. Boogie is immortalized in the film and the digital copies on Ellison's computers, but the suspense wans and wavers the more screen time the deity is given. In addition to the obscure deity known for being a 'child eater', other ghosts haunt Ellison.

Ethan Hawke does a superb job as Ellison Oswald. He is a man desperate to regain control of his life after two lesser successes follow his #1 New York Best Seller 'Kentucky Blood'. When the noises of the crime-scene house and the attic film findings make him question his fortitude for his new project, Hawke's Ellison obsession to provide security for his family and future presses him forward regardless of any possible threats. As he becomes more sure that his findings will return him to his former writing glory, Hawke's Ellison turns quickly to whiskey and darkened locked rooms. Reminiscent of The Shining's Jack Torrence, the tortured writer could descend into possible madness.

From the opening found-footage scene that centers around a family hanging around in their backyard, the anticipation for the gruesome brutality was excitingly high. The first half of the film is a creepy experience of a man discovering gruesome evidence of something sinister, with the house settling with strange noises and the depictions on 8mm sometimes difficult to watch. But once Bughuul is given a name, the film steers into the typical supernatural fare. There are some great use of music, snap edits of missing children and of Bughuul, and the lead up to the end of the film for the Oswalt family is a minor master stroke, but the overuse of the missing children and of the Babylonian deity distracts from the potential of Sinister.

For the uninitiated, sinister may illicit gasps, averted gazes. Or possibly a few screams. For those steeped deep in the genre there still even a few gruesome depictions that will make you tip your hat to the writer/director Derrickson newest attempt of suspense horror. Unfortunately, most will have already solved the mystery of the murders and the missing children way before the big reveals.

A creepy flick, headed by a solid cast performance, Sinister has decent storytelling and visuals, but for every gruesome found footage sequence there is also a bit of low budget camp that distracts from the caliber of the rest of the film. The film is sinister, but not as much as one would hope.

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