Familia de ladrones

A rather entertaining (to me anyway) Corey Haim movie from 1991. It is a movie that is fast as the pace is fast as is the run time for this picture. So you do not have to invest a whole lot of time in this adventure, but to me it was a fun adventure. There is a gang of criminals that plan their heists to perfection. Everything is split second timing and the getaways are also to the letter. Well there are four members in this gang and as so often is the case there is a split as certain members get greedy and think they should get a bigger cut. So off goes two of the members leaving Corey Haim and his dad's character on their own and you find out quickly that the female and other guy in the gang are not nearly as effective without the other two. The brains of the outfit is the Corey Haim character and without him the other two are lost, so near the end of the film they kidnap him and force him to plan heists for them. The film is rather good, the cast is rather funny. Corey is good as the brains and I thought the guy playing his dad was rather good too as I loved the scene where they were falling off the bridge. Cynthia Rothrock plays the female of the gang and as I usually do not care for her in other movies she is okay here. She usually takes on this super guys in movies and once I saw a movie where she gets hit by this humongous guy dead on and she barely flinched, sorry not going to happen. She may be good at karate, but if she were to be hit as hard as it was depicted in that movie she would be unconscious on the ground. Here though she only takes on normal dudes and I figure she could handle them. There would later be a sequel to this film, but I did not enjoy that one at all.

I honestly had not heard about this movie before. I actually found it while doing laundry on the free stuff shelf they leave down in the room after people move out. There as also four copies of Titanic on VHS and a tape of Eddie Murphy's Delirious. In case you were wondering. With all that choice how could I pass up a promotional copy of a Corey Haim movie I have never heard of...which also stars Cynthia Rothrock...weird.

The movie is about a weirdly overly enthusiastic kid and his dad who are a bank robbing team. They drive from town to town and rob banks and the post office, getting away using plans that are meticulously thought out to the last detail. They also talk about Cynthia Rothrock's chest a lot, or as Mr. Haim says "Call Them Hooters, Dad." In fact, the father-son relationship seems like it is really close. The main topic they talk about that isn't robbing banks, is boobs, and sex with ladies. Some hi-jinks they go through include Haim getting distracted by ladies, talking about ladies boobs, as well as having sex once, which he breaks his dad out of jail just so he can tell him. There are some really great car chases though, including a super fun one at the very end. Also, Cynthia Rothrock kicks everything including furniture and fast food. So, it's not all bad.

Fast Getaway is alright. It has a few fun moments, that mostly include some well-directed car chases. But, I wasn't too into the father-son sex talk plot line which took up most of the movie.

The most notable thing with this movie might just be how strikingly handsome Corey Haim is here. The cover art doesn't do him justice at all.

Haim got pigeonholed into these often weird slapstick heavy movies. He does handle slapstick well so no problem there.

As long as you know you're getting a Haim slapstick movie, it's not bad.

But there are script and production problems here. The bridge across the canyon sequence (with Haim in a dress) is such a bizarre set piece, it feels like a hallucination. Beyond that, the gag where the two leads are falling goes on and on and on. It starts to feel like Bill and Ted or the like and quite out of place.

The final action sequence also somehow isn't as funny as it's trying to be. Perhaps because it feels like Haim's character really is in peril.

Good lord, I've got to stop wasting my money on movies from the post-1989 catalog of Corey Haim (except for Prayer of the Rollerboys, which was a decent surprise). This being, of course, yet another film in which those not so overly nostlagic will realize that Corey had hit rock bottom and would never recover.

Fast Getaway is the light-comedy adventures of a team of father-and-son bankrobbers. After a disagreement among their gang of four which included a clueless doofus and a black belt blonde, Nelson (Corey Haim) and his dad decide to rob banks alone. Only Nelson's dad expects it to be temporary, wanting his son to go legit so he can end up in law school or business school (the man has no clear idea of his expectations as to which graduate school track he expects his son to take other than whatever will allow an easy transition into white collar crime) much to the chagrin of Nelson, who loves the life of easy money. But, the team are not as invincible as they think they are when they're busted for robbing a bank in a squat town in Utah around the same time a stranger to the past enters their lives as does their scheming former partners.

It has all the depth of the notorious 'Cool as Ice' "action" film (ranked as one of the worst 100 movies on IMDb), and about as much of the same cheesy writing. I particularly enjoy the scene in which Nelson and dear old dad, trying to escape from the police by anchoring over a bridge, plunge thousands of feet straight down into shallow, rocky rapids and live to tell the tale...completely unscathed, mind you. Or, the finale in which brave Nelson is being dragged from a truck while holding onto a chain link fence that neither eletrocutes him or gets too hot to hold as it is scraped across the pavement for miles. Nor, does it flip with the sharp turns of the truck and the lack of support by his weight. And, I especially cringe at Corey Haim's half-concocted Italian-American accent that reared itself during random moments, not to mention his terrible array of slang, especially in many of the references to women.

Recommended for anyone who can watch any number of Corey Haim's early 90s disasters and actually find them enjoyable.

Corey Haim is so obnoxious in this film. I mean, he's by and large a terrible actor. No range whatsoever. But his character is so annoying here. And when he keeps saying "Pop" to his dad every few lines... it's like nails on a chalkboard. The whole movie is a waste of time. Some of the action was decent, but barely. No wonder it went straight to video when it was tested for audiences, and everyone hated. The directing is awful. No sense of tone, pacing, acting, humor, tension. It plays so flat and lazy. Save 90 mins of your life, and spend it staring at a wall... that would be a better use of time.