Movie review: 'A Perfect Getaway'

Milla Jovovich and Steve Zahn (Credit: Javier Pesquera/Rogue)

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2 1/2 stars (out of four)

How many times has it been said about a thriller that “nothing is what it seems”? 

Not often enough, according to writer-director David Twohy, whose cockamamie honeymoon-fiasco picture “A Perfect Getaway” at least has the fortitude to venture off the beaten path of formula. Be warned, though: When the story’s twist arrives,  you half-expect Twohy to throw in a couple of reels from “Dead Again,” plus outtakes from “The Usual Suspects.” It’s a lulu; I’m just not sure if it’s the sort of lulu that will lead to great word-of-mouth. The film combines mouth-watering scenery (Puerto Rico subbing, largely, for the Hawaiian island of Kauai) with frequent stabbings. I rather enjoyed it, though Twohy’s crucial surprise does seem like a long, preposterous way to go for a trip to the disorient.

Newly married screenwriter Cliff (Steve Zahn) and his bride, Cydney (Milla Jovovich), travel to Kauai for some hiking, beachfront sunsets and the sort of memories that last a lifetime. Early on, with comical bluntness, their rental vehicle is seen leaving tire tracks on a newspaper headline: “Young Couple Butchered in Honolulu.”

En route to a secluded spot, the couple encounters a good-looking pair of secretive, possibly psychopathic hitchhikers (played by Marley Shelton and Chris Hemsworth) and, later, a good-looking pair of secretive, possibly psychopathic travelers (Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez). The film keeps its character roster limited, so the mystery isn’t so much who’s fooling whom, but how and why.

“A Perfect Getaway” is guided by one of those scripts a writer writes when he wants to show off what he’s learned about thriller conventions and to mess with them, the way Anthony Shaffer and Ira Levin did  on stage  with “Sleuth” and “Deathtrap.”  The film is gabbier than usual for this kind of thing. Some of the detours are entertaining, though. Twohy takes time, for example, to have Olyphant’s ex-military op critique the vocal intonations of Nicolas Cage. “I love how he gets all intense right at the end of a sentence!!” he says, in a funny moment.

Jovovich is a bit of a drag; she has a hard enough time hitting one acting note at a time, let alone combining two or three. But Zahn, Olyphant and particularly Sanchez keep the guessing games reasonably lively. I wish I weren’t quite so baffled by the twist, which left me in a perplexed state for a few too many minutes before the weapons came out and characters started grabbing each other by the leg, cliffside. But if only for such flourishes as Twohy’s clever use of that old imperiled-vacationers prop, the walkie-talkie, “A Perfect Getaway” is a little better—well, a little stranger—than most of the disposables this summer.

mjphillips@tribune.com

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