Before Timothy Olyphant (The Crazies, Dreamcatcher) was earning high praise for his role as US Marshall Raylan Givens in FX’s blockbuster television show Justified, he was making a name for himself in action/adventure movies, first in smaller character roles and then as a lead actor. Olyphant’s Givens on Justified is easily my favorite television character of the present time, distancing himself from Hugh Laurie’s Gregory House on House and Steve Carell’s Michal Scott on The Office.

In A Perfect Getaway, Olyphant stars as a Hawaiian traveler named Nick. Nick, along with his girlfriend Gina (Kiele Sanchez – A & E’s The Glades), meet up with newlyweds Cliff (Steve Zahn – Rescue Dawn, Joy Ride) and Cydney (Milla Jovovich – Resident Evil series) for a trip hike around Honolulu. Though it is known that there have been recent murders on the island, these two couples do not think anything evil can happen to them. We are led to believe that the murders have been committed by Cleo and Kale, a pair of hitchhikers that Cliff and Cydney pass while traveling and who later show up on the same trail, adding further intrigue to the story. Kale seems dark, quiet, disturbed, and a bit controlling of Cleo. Many of these characteristics you might expect of a killer, but would it or would it not be too apparent if Cleo and Kale are indeed the killers on the loose?

A significant twist occurs more than halfway through this movie, which is nearly impossible to detect. And once the twist occurs, the film takes a turn for the worse. We are made aware of each character’s entire back story, which will make many viewers utterly disinterested in anything that happens from that point forward. Once we return from the ten-minute history trip, we couldn’t care less about what happens to them.

Hollywood is continually trying to one-up the same basic storylines with unique twists or different ways of viewing the movie. These include point-of-view cameras, stories that co-occur over different periods, characters with multiple personalities, characters who start acting in entirely different ways 75% after 75% of the movie is over, etc.). This is an example of Hollywood doing just that. I agree that we do not need another story of naive people being chased across an island by a bunch of crazies, but we also don’t need something with as little of a meaningful storyline as this.

This is the second Olyphant movie in a row that has disappointed me immensely (The Crazies being the first). I had high hopes of each of those movies being those hidden gems that I so grave. But after watching these less-than-stellar movies, I am happy Olyphant landed a lead role on a quality television show that seems like it might be on the air for another five years. This movie had all of the hype of a psychopath hunting humans (the type of genre I usually can get into). However, there wasn’t any of that. There was no suspense. The twist was so unnatural that it was stupid. For a movie supposedly set in Hawaii, the landscape was far less impressive than it should have been. In all, A Perfect Getaway was an imperfect disappointment.

Plot 6/10
Character Development 3/10
Character Chemistry 5/10
Acting 5/10
Screenplay 4/10
Directing 5/10
Cinematography 7/10
Sound 3/10
Hook and Reel 3/10
Universal Relevance 2/10
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