FAST GETAWAY

Make a fast getaway from FAST GETAWAY, if you don’t want to get burned. From the slag heap of festered film fare, this mindless action-comedy about a father and son who team up to rob banks across the heartland of America has about as much going for it as an over-leveraged savings-and-loan.

Sam Potter is an amoral father who uses his 16-year-old son Nelson as a hostage decoy to rob banks. A karate-whacking female accomplice named Lilly and her lover, Tony, are also included among the dunderhead cast.

The bank robbing team splits up over a disagreement, with father and son setting out to relieve a rural Colorado town of its lottery winnings (Nelson dresses as a woman to pull off the heist). Sam wants his son to get out of the bank robbing business and get an MBA (“The best criminals are on Wall Street,” he quips), but Nelson has his own ideas, and talks Dad into robbing just one more bank.

No thanks to Lilly, the duo are apprehended, and Sam tossed in jail. Guess who arrives to release the young lad? Lorraine–one of dear old Dad’s demolition derby acquaintances from yesteryear, who just happens to be Nelson’s mother and is quite upset that Sam sped away with their son when he was only four years old.

At any rate, while Dad languishes in the clink, junior gives more than just driving lessons to Lorraine’s leggy next-door neighbor. Always out for kicks, Nelson talks his mom into busting Sam out of jail, which they do by ramming the cell wall with a stolen garbage truck.

It’s not much of a movie. Some of the low-budget action sequences and stunts aren’t that bad, like a fight in the back of a speeding pick-up truck, but the dialogue appears to have been thought up at the last moment when it was remembered that the characters had to say something (it would have been better if they hadn’t). In addition, there is a surplusage of scatological humor and absurd implausibilities.

FAST GETAWAY is extremely morally corrupt. Bank robbery, grand theft and transvestism are all made to look like fun, as father and son whoop it up. Even more hard to believe is their rejoicing when Nelson loses his virginity. Someone should point out to them Proverbs 19:3, “A man’s own folly ruins his life.”