Written by Old Bluffer 25th Aug 2009

Spoiler alert: This is a new film, and it's worth watching, so I'd advise not reading on unless you've seen it. To be absolutely clear, a major part of the fun of the film is the twist ending, which this review spoils.

Cliff is a physically unimpressive screenwriter, and a man that is also under a fair bit of stress. This isn't ideal, as he's honeymooning wih his beautiful wife, Cydney, in an idyllic Hawaiian setting.

The stress is caused simply by terrible timing - their dream honeymoon happens to coincide with a couple being slaughtered - on the islands they have just left in fact.

Needless to say, this puts something of a downer on their trip.

Matters aren't helped by them getting on the wrong side of another couple, when, in a fit of newlywed generosity, they stop to pick up hitchhikers.  The couple turns out to be quite scruffy, and Cliff immediately suspects them of being potential criminals.  Now to be fair, they are quite possibly just "alternative lifestyle" people, typical of backpackers the world over.  Cliff isn't taking any chances though, and decides not to give them a lift after all, lying about where they are headed, which enrages the husband, and his cursing definitely adds to the subdued mood of the day.

They press on regardless, meeting another couple who, if not their exact type of people, at least look as if they shower regularly and haven't spent their lives in a perpetual quest for cannabis.

This new couple are called Gina and Nick, and are both attractive, confident and friendly.  They hike together to a hidden waterfall, which is near the area the scruffy couple were going, and inevitably Cliff runs straight into the angry husband.  There is an uncomfortable confrontation, with the larger man looking as if he is seriously thinking about assaulting Cliff.  Nick appears though, and with one cocky stare makes the man back down

After this, we learn more about Nick - a lot more in fact, as Nick isn't shy about boasting about his exploits.  He claims to be ex-special ops, with a huge number of top secret, classified missions under his belt.  He continually regales Cliff with these tall stories, as he seems to be under the hope that the screenwriter will want to use his life story for a film.  It turns out that he was discharged after the back of his head was blown off, and replaced with a metal plate.  As Gina affectionately tells us, "He's real hard to kill".

Now this statement is intentionally directed at the audience, and this happens an enjoyable amount.  The film is extremely self-aware of the genre, and delights in playing with the fact.  As another hiker tells Cliff (supposedly about the trail ahead), "There's plenty more twists and turns before you get to the end!"

So, the scene is set, we have Cliff and Cydney, who it is quite clear are in danger of getting murdered, and four plausible suspects - Nick and Gina, and the scruffy couple.

As they continue down the trail, things get ever more tense, with Cliff convinced Nick and Gina are the killers (Gina doesn't do herself any favours here when she reveals she is an ex-butcher, and skillfully carves up a deer that the macho Nick has killed with a bow) but Cydney doesn't want to believe it.

Their apparent isolation is shattered the next morning when police helicopters appear over a nearby beach, and some serious arresting action takes place. Scrambling for a better view, the two couples see the scruffy pair being hauled away, and the audience is shown a tin found amongst their things, containing human teeth.

Now there is no way this is the climax of the film, but it means Cliff and Cydney can relax their guard. They even admit with embarrassment that they were suspecting their new friends.

Finally relieved of stress, they reach their final destination - a gorgeous secluded beach that very few hikers ever get to.

It is here that the twists start to unravel.

Cliff goads Nick into going off on a kayaking expedition to some nearby sea caves, whilst Gina idly flicks through the photos on Cliff's camcorder. She sees sonething that is clearly shocking, drops the camera and runs off in terror.  Sitting in the audience, we are obviously itching to see what gruesome image she has has just seen, and the director obliges, panning down to show...

...the happy couple on their wedding day.

Or was it? We only see the picture for a brief moment, and there is lots of distracting action going on at the moment.

Gina has armed herself with an axe and is fleeing the beach, desperately trying to climb up the cliff.

Cydney finds the camcorder photo and realises the game is up.  Drawing a knife, she charges after Gina...

Cut to the sea caves, and Nick is toying with his tequila bottle.  Earlier he revealed he'd always wondered whether the scorpion inside it was killed first, or drowned in the drink alive.  As he kayaks into the cave, followed by an unusually confident Cliff, he experiences a Eureka moment.

"It goes in alive" he mutters, disgusted at his stupidity.

Sure enough, Cliff has drawn a gun and starts to taunt him. He is no longer a slightly geeky scriptwriter, we see him in his true guise, a psychotic killer.

He fires the gun as Nick makes a dive for the water.  Overhead, Gina hears the gunshot and peers down at her murdered husband. Cliff sees her, there are more shots, and suddenly Cydney reaches the clifftop and charges Gina with the knife.

Poor Gina is terrified by this point, and gets the knife plunged into her leg - but, Cydney's momentum is too much, and she can't stop herself falling over the edge, to land with a splash in front of Cliff.

The knife is well and truly in Gina's leg, and it is rather disgusting watching her slowly pull it out.  She limps away, but with two killers after her, it's not clear how she can escape for long.

Sure enough, with Cydney helping coordinate the search via walkie-talkie, Cliff tracks her down.  Gina impales his hand with the knife, but he has a gun and is hot on her tail.

She is about to be saved of course, by her studly husband, Nick, who is most definitely "hard to kill".  We are shown him breathing underneath the overturned kayak, with the metal plate on his head partially detached.  The bullet evidently zinged off of it, and now Nick is ready to save his wife.

With a Banzai cry of rage, Nick leaps from the top of a cliff, swinging a knife of almost machete proportions, and hacks Cliff's hand as he lands.  This splits the hand grotesquely and after some brawling Nick has the gun levelled at Cliff's head.

Meanwhile, Cydney has flagged down a police helicopter and has a great birds-eye view of what's going on.  A police sniper is targeting both men, and another is shouting for Nick to stand down.  For a moment we think Cydney has the perfect opportunity to get Nick shot by the police, but instead she tells the sniper:

"The killer is the one that's just about to go for his gun"

The sniper is obviously just itching to plug someone, and this is good enough for him, he fires, and Cliff is drilled through the forehead by his shot.



So what's going on here then?!

This is a fair question, as initially this doesn't seem to be a very reasonable plot twist.  After all, the audience has been shown plenty of scenes of Cliff and Cydney in complete privacy, seemingly terrified by the prospect of being on the island with killers.

This is all resolved nicely however, with a rather elegant contrivance, which we are shown in some well shot flashback scenes.  Cliff you see, is actually called Rocky, and has some serious mental issues.  He met Cydney when she was young, vulnerable and impressionable, and she was soon caught within his perverted and dangerous web.

What Rocky likes to do is steal people's lives - literally.  He befriends them (with Cydney's help), learns as much as he can about the minutiae of their existence, then kills them, rips out their teeth to hinder identification of the bodies, and finally impersonates them.  That is why Gina was so scared with the camcorder photo - the couple in the picture wasn't Cliff and Cydney.

This also explains lots of other subtle clues, like Cliff failing to recognise Nick's famous "Shaking the bush here, boss!" quote from Cool Hand Luke, despite supposedly being a film screenwriter.

Cydney is of course guilty of fueling these fantasies, willingly roleplaying far happier lives than she believes she could ever experience.

So, even when they are not being watched, the killers acted out their very own Play for Today, with the welcome side-effect of bamboozling the audience.

At the end we are left to speculate why Cydney betrayed Rocky.  Perhaps she knew the game was up, and it was a cynical bid for clemency. Or maybe she'd felt trapped by Rocky for far too long, and this was her best chance of escape.  Either way, it seems hard to see how she'll avoid some lengthy jail time.



Old Bluffer's Thoughts

I'll admit, neither Mouseburger nor myself had even heard of this film.  We were in the queue to see Inglourious Basterds.  We even walked into the Tarantino theatre, before walking back out again in disgust, as it was heaving with people (we're not big fans of paying to see the screen at an acute ten degree angle)

So, back at the ticket office, we had to decide what to exchange our tickets for.  Luckily this was a simple process of elimination (with some chick flick and Bandslam being the obvious contenders).

So, A Perfect Getaway it was then, and we were very pleasantly surprised with the way our evening was saved.  We greatly enjoy the recent trend in wry, self-aware horrors (such as Teeth and Tormented) and this is a murder thriller in that vein.

The movie entertains in just about every area. The script is witty, the characters are engaging, the director teases us throughout and there is some very nice cinematography, not just of the spectacular Hawaian scenery, but also some more experimental shots (one sequence manages to look rather like frames from a manga comic).

The acting is also worthy of note, especially from the male leads.  Timothy Olyphant has great fun playing Nick, who is easily the most memorable character.

Steve Zahn has the most interesting acting to do though, as he has to play the slightly ineffectual Cliff for most of the film, before becoming Rocky.  He does this superbly, his whole face contorting into feral psychosis once he ditches the Cliff persona.

If I had to make a criticism, it would probably be during the climactic sequences, which were rather more generic than the film perhaps deserved (much like another recent film, Orphan, in fact).

All in all though, an enjoyable thriller, and one I'm glad I didn't end up missing.