The good old B-movie flame burns bright in A Perfect Getaway, David Twohy's rip-snorting guessing game about a vacation gone very, very bad. It must have sounded nice in the planning stages: an isolated honeymoon trek to a remote beach on Kauai, with nothing but backpacks, Hawaiian breezes, and the occasional pleasant encounter with a fellow wayfarer on the hiking trail. That was the plan for newlyweds Cliff and Cydney, anyway, before a shocking murder in Honolulu, the night before the hike, raised the red flag of suspicion. What we're left with is six couples on a lonely trail in paradise, a murderer (but probably two murderers), and a great deal of anxiety. Cliff and Cydney are played by Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich; Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez are a pair of friendly but vaguely disturbing trailmates; Chris Hemsworth and Marley Shelton are a downright creepy couple who won't go away. Twohy has a knack for infectious concepts (see also Pitch Black and The Arrival) and this one is grabby; he's also got a mysterious ability to play the premise straight yet somehow have a great deal of fun with it (for instance, there's much trail talk about the rules of screenwriting, which comes across as playful rather than clumsily self-conscious). The casting works, even if it's difficult for Milla Jovovich to seem in danger from anybody else in the world. Timothy Olyphant is the standout, as a former Special Ops soldier whose survival skills are impressive-bordering-on-scary. Although the film is undeniably built as a whodunit, worry less about the big "reveal" than about having a good time with fun pulp material. Come to think of it, though, the reveal is well played too.
Source: Robert Horton (Amazon.com)
