A PERFECT GETAWAY

Cliff and Cydney are a newlywed couple on their honeymoon in Hawaii. During an excursion to one of the islands in the archipelago, they first meet Kale and Cleo, a couple with a somewhat unsettling appearance who ask them for a ride, then Nick and Gina, another couple of adventurers of whom he is an ex-marine engaged in the Middle East. Cliff and his wife learn that a pair of psychotic killer inmates are on the loose on the island who have slaughtered a couple of tourists and begin to suspect that the criminals are hiding among their travel companions. It's a thriller and nothing else. "A Perfect Getaway", the latest work by the talented David Twohy ("Pitch Black"; "Below"), belongs to the genre while always touching it transversely. The film in question, although classifiable as a thriller in every respect, manages to distance itself thanks to a beautiful and unusual setting and a narrative mechanism that prefers to adopt a particular point of view by playing with plot twists and identities. What immediately strikes about "A Perfect Getaway" is the geographical context, the beautiful white beaches and the dense green Hawaiian forests that contrast with the very dark story made of intrigues, suspicions, paranoias and murders. The way Twohy managed to render this contrast naturally, avoiding the machinery that often emerges when playing with oppositions, is praiseworthy and then the originality of the locations is accompanied by the beauty of the same, enhanced by the photography of Mark Plummer ("Pulse") that enhances the colors and brightness of each scene. Twohy, in addition to directing, is also the author of the script and in this case we have another center. "A Perfect Getaway" boasts a quartet of well-characterized characters and witty dialogues that often play with the same clichés of the genre using intra-film self-referentiality of a certain search and originality. Cliff, in fact, is a Hollywood screenwriter and in his exchanges of quips with Nick there is often a funny reflection on the narrative mechanisms of the thriller genre that work almost as flashforwards for the same "A Perfect Getaway". A film that plays with the viewer and the same narrative rules that are at the base of the genre, therefore, and to confirm this there is also the surprise ending that, on the one hand, cannot avoid leaving some doubt in the viewer especially for the questionable plausibility, but on the other hand works here more than many other films, because once in a while it turns out to be really unexpected. Among the various characters that populate the film, almost all distinguished by a particular physical strength and psychological tenacity, the character that turns out to be the most successful and complex is the ex-marine played by Timothy Olyphant ("Hitman"; "La città verrà distrutta all'alba"), an actor in constant professional growth, who combines an undeniable charge of sympathy with a successful aura of ambiguity; a braggart who, according to him, has lived a thousand adventures, sometimes so 'perfect' that they sound like lies, a strange character, a man of action with a metal plate in his head and with the particular hobby of hunting, almost the protagonist of a comic made credible here in his 'incredibility'. The cast is nevertheless first-rate and alongside Olyphant are Milla Jovovich ("Joan of Arc"; "Resident Evil"), Steve Zahan ("Sahara"; "National Security") and Kiele Sanchez ("Lost"; "Insanitarium"), while in minor roles appear the future Thor Chris Hemsworth and the rodrigueziana Marley Shelton ("Planet Terror"; "Sin City"). "A Perfect Getaway" is not a perfect film, far from it, it has a narrative structure that enhances the rhythmic imbalance between the first and second half, one verbose and excessively preparatory and the other rich in frenetic action, as well as it has that twist in the end that might seem indigestible to someone. However, it is a film, in its small way, original and well made, characterized by remarkable technical and artistic skill. A thriller that is not seen every day and already for that alone it would be worth recovering Strangely snubbed by Italian distribution and relegated directly to the home video market.