A Perfect Getaway (2009)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO THE KILLERS ARE)

[This is the posting that prompted me to create Plot Busters. Someone posted that they nodded off during the performace, and didn't understand the movie. The advice that they received was to look it up on Wikipedia. They deleted their question before I had time to post a Plot Buster.]

A Perfect Getaway (2009) is an American psychological thriller film written and directed by David Twohy, starring Chris Hemsworth, Milla Jovovich, Kiele Sanchez, Timothy Olyphant, Steve Zahn and Marley Shelton. The film was shot in Puerto Rico and Hawaii, and its plot contain so many twists, turns and blind alleys, that it would defeat even the cleverest of champion maze solving lab rats.

(The plot summary available on Wikipedia is of very little help in unraveling the story, as it appears to have been written by somebody who themselves fell asleep at some point during the performance.)

The Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich characters are the killers.

Although the movie begins by portraying them as a mild-mannered and happy newlywed couple enjoying a hiking honeymoon in the wilds of Hawaii, they are eventually revealed to be a pair of psychopaths who are trying to make a career for themselves by murdering other couples whose identities they assume.

On their way by jeep to a particularly remote and beautiful beach the couple run into another pair of, seemingly less clean cut, hikers, played by Hemsworth and Shelton, who Zahn and Jovovich don't offer a lift to, despite the fact that they are on their way to the same beach.

Further along the trail Zahn and Jovovich meet a second couple of more experienced hikers, played by Olyphant and Sanchez, who they decide to team up with on their journey.

However, the widom of this decision soon comes into question when the group discovers a distressed young woman who has heard frightening news of a brutal slaying of yet another honeymooning couple on a nearby island, their teeth having been removed as part of the murder, ...

because Olyphant has been recounting his time as a member of the special forces involved in the invasion of Iraq, and Sanchez has demonstrated considerable skill with a knife by butchering a goat that Olyphant killed for everyones' supper.

Calm is temporarily restored within the group as the local police arrest the apparently sinister pair, whom Zahn and Jovovich had failed to give a lift in their jeep to earlier, after a collection of teeth is found in Hemsworth possession.

However, the truth of the situation is revealed, and blind panic restored, when the Sanchez character accidentally discovers camcorder footage of Zahn and Jovovich rehearing their new identities, those of their most recent victims.

All of Olyphant's military training, and Sanchez's butchering skills come into play in their ensuing battle for survival with Zahn and Jovovich, in which Olyphant only manages (somewhat improbably) to escape death from a bullet to the head by virtue of the metal plate that was put there following a previous encounter with a granade during his time in service.

In the end Olyphant and Sanchez prevail, but only after she pulls him out of the line of fire of a sniper, one of a number of police who have gotten involved in the chase, who luckily ends up killing Zahn insteed.

The movie closes with Olyphant proposing marriage to Sanchez, as they are airlifted from the scene. Perhaps not surprisingly, they both agree to forgo the pleasures of a honeymoon.

It is a testament to the skill of Twohy as a writer and a director that he manages to pull off this slight of hand, without leaving the audience feeling cheated by unforeseeable plot twists.

The clues are all there it you can manage to spot them. It's just that they've been so cleverly mashed up that he is able to play on an audience's expectations, so that the plot twists, when they do occur, are genuinely surprising.

But, as you found out, take your eyes off the action for even a moment, and you'll be lost.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Perfect_Getaway
http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/movies/07perfect.html
http://outlawvern.com/2010/01/13/a-perfect-getaway/
http://www.cinemademerde.com/Perfect_Getaway.shtml

And that's how we Plot Bust.