Greil Marcus is a cultural critic whose books include Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music (1975), Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989), and Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads (2005). Marcus's last appearance at PFA was to accompany the publication of his BFI monograph on The Manchurian Candidate (2002).

An apocryphal story surrounding this fight-or-flight actioner is that Mexican politicos resented Peckinpah's depiction of our NAFTA neighbor as a mythic destination for fugitives. Still, The Getaway thrives on the felon's fantasy of an easy buck followed by an easier escape into tequila-tinged obscurity. Borrowing a plot from noirmeister Jim Thompson (which he in turn probably boosted from the Bogart vehicle High Sierra), The Getaway trails Doc McCoy (Steve McQueen) as he takes it on the lam after a botched robbery. In tow is his moll, Mrs. McCoy, played by Ali MacGraw, reheated from her recent demise in Love Story. With balletic precision, they evade a pack of trigger-happy pursuers, tracking them across the hardtack of Texas. It's not the Mcs, however, but the montage-a high-caliber assembly of bodies and bullets. Within the well-oiled action, Peckinpah implies that freedom is a factor of motion, jolted forward by fitful blasts of buckshot.