A Perfect Getaway (2009)

Cliff (Steve Zahn) and Cydney (Milla Jovovich) have just experienced a beautiful wedding, and now they’re headed to the island of Kauai, Hawaii, for a honeymoon adventure at a very secluded beach. The happy young marrieds are seeking A Perfect Getaway — but what they find instead is not quite so perfect as they anticipated.

Cliff and Cydney’s troubles begin on the road to the trailhead, when they have an awkward encounter with hitchhiking couple Cleo (Marley Shelton) and Kale (Chris Hemsworth). Cliff and Cydney’s hesitation, fueled by Kale’s menacing demeanor, leads them to fear they’ve made a pair of enemies. Their paranoia increases as they follow the occasionally treacherous 11-mile trail across cliffs and through the jungle to the beach, as they learn from other hikers that a newlywed couple were murdered in Honolulu, and that Cleo and Kale appear to be following them along the trail. Cliff and Cydney then meet Nick (Timothy Olyphant), who seems friendly but also a blowhard, claiming he’s some sort of secret “Special Ops” guerrilla warrior, regaling the couple with tales of his exploits and taunting “screenplay writer” Cliff about his nascent film career. Nick introduces them to his twangy Southern girlfriend Gina (Kiele Sanchez), and as they all continue along the trail with a “safety in numbers” feeling, the two women seem to hit it off, while Cliff distrusts Nick and thinks he and Cydney may have befriended the wrong people — especially after Nick demonstrates his abilities with weapons, and Gina shows how easily she can skin and gut an animal.

David Twohy, the writer and director of Pitch Black and The Chronicles Of Riddick, is clearly having some fun in making this film. By making one of the lead characters a screenwriter, he’s able to include some self-referential remarks that are like verbally winking to the audience, including mentions of a twist in the second act and possible red herrings (or “red snappers” as Nick erroneously calls them). He also compacts the exposition into a swift bundle to get it out of the way, and essentially isolates the action to a small group of people and a couple of locations. That sense of isolation, an effective element in thrillers such as Alien and the 1989 Nicole Kidman classic Dead Calm, heightens the paranoia of both the characters and the audience. Twohy cleverly employs these tricks and techniques to help distract the viewer from some of the more predictable elements of the story, and by the time the tension built up in the first half of the movie finally boils over, the audience may be too caught up in the violent action and surprises to really think about possible plot holes, gaps in logic, and generally workmanlike direction. (How many camera shots looking straight down from the sky can you use in a film? Too many — sometimes it feels like an IMAX travelogue of Hawaii.)

The movie is aided by a small ensemble of talented rising actors, which seems much more effective and believable here than if more well known “movie stars” had been cast in it. Steve Zahn plays Cliff subtly as the young groom who finds himself in dangerous circumstances, and his interactions with Timothy Olyphant’s Nick carry many interesting nuances both in dialogue and in physical expression. Milla Jovovich brings a few interesting shades to her sketchy character, though Twohy doesn’t use her as effectively as he could have. Most amusing to me was seeing Kiele Sanchez running through the Hawaiian jungle once again; her widely disliked character on the TV series LOST was killed off, and though the setting of this film is similar, hopefully her fine performance here will help to erase that taint on her career.

As the summer vacation season approaches its end, it’s nice to be able to squeeze in a little relaxing entertainment before returning to the daily grind. A Perfect Getaway is not perfect, nor is it relaxing; but it is a relatively entertaining way to get away from it all, at least for an hour and 40 minutes.