"Getaway" got away from the dubious distinction of 0% on Rotten Tomatoes with a positive review from Norman Wilner of Now Toronto, who praised the film's quick pace and pared-down story to save it from a potential record-worst.
As TheWrap previously reported, the Ethan Hawke/Selena Gomez car-chase thriller was speeding toward a spot in Rotten Tomatoes' worst-of-all-time list with 55 green splats — all of them harshly negative — as of Thursday night.
But Wilner's thumbs-up, posted sometime overnight Friday, stopped the bleeding. As of this writing, the Warner Bros. wide release stood at 75 rotten, 1 fresh.
"At a fleet 90 minutes, Getaway feels like the opposite of the increasingly over-complicated Fast & Furious features," Wilner wrote in his review, itself a fleet 172 words. "It’s nothing but essential parts, barrelling from one chase sequence to another with no time for distractions."
Also read: 'Playing for Keeps' Gets Some Really Rotten Tomatoes
That broke the film's zero-percent spell — bad news for "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" (a 2002 actioner starring Lucy Liu and Antonio Banderas, 0 percent with 108 reviews), whose distinction as the site's worst-reviewed-movie ever is safe — for now.
And lest you think Wilner is some kind of contrarian, it's worth noting that his reviews have agreed with the Tomatometer about 75 percent of the time over his last 50 (though he did like "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone," calling the 36 percent-fresh film "Pleasantly dopey." So there's that).
Also read: 'Getaway' Review: Too Fast & Too Furious Wild-Goose Car Chase
There's still time for "Getaway," which opens in 2,000 theaters Friday, to improve its RT score — the site accepts reviews long after theatrical and homevideo release.