Getting Away with Murder is a 1996 American black comedy film directed and written by Harvey Miller.[2]
| Getting Away with Murder | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Harvey Miller |
| Written by | Harvey Miller |
| Produced by | Penny Marshall Frank Price |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Frank Tidy |
| Edited by | Richard Nord |
| Music by | John Debney |
| Distributed by | Savoy Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 92 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $197,322[1] |
Ethics professor Jack Lambert's (Dan Aykroyd) neighbor Max Mueller (Jack Lemmon) is revealed on the TV news to be escaped Nazi war criminal Karl Luger, whom the courts sentenced to death. Pressured by the news media's allegations, Mueller plans escape to South America.
Angered that Mueller might never pay for his crimes, Lambert takes the drastic step of poisoning him by injecting cyanide into some of the fruit in Mueller's apple tree, from which he regularly makes freshly juiced apple juice. The police initially believe it's a suicide, greatly upsetting Lambert, who mails them a cryptic letter explaining that it was actually a murder to carry out the court sentence and to avenge all the lives taken.
Later, the TV news reveals that Mueller was misidentified and is innocent. Feeling guilty, Lambert atones by dumping his fiancée Gail (Bonnie Hunt) and marrying Mueller's daughter Inga (Lily Tomlin). However, after the wedding, Lambert receives information assuring him of Mueller's guilt.
This was veteran writer and director Harvey Miller's final project.[3] It received poor reviews from critics.[3][4][5][6][7]
Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars, writing, "Here is a film that tries to find comedy in the Holocaust, and it looks in the wrong places, in the wrong way, and becomes a sad embarrassment."[2]
Nathan Rabin wrote, "Murder suffers from what I call Craig Brewer Syndrome [...] Filmmakers afflicted with Craig Brewer Syndrome make the least offensive films out of the most offensive premises. [...] Lemmon and Tomlin deliver better performances than the material warrants. A deceptively playful Lemmon is plausible as both a genocidal monster in hiding and a harmless old man and Tomlin's uncompromising performance is refreshingly devoid of sentimentality. Yet their best efforts are wasted in a movie that aspires to make audiences laugh and think and only achieves half its goals."[8]
After the film's theatrical run, HBO released the movie onto VHS. In 2004, the film was finally released on DVD. The DVD is now discontinued and as of March 29, 2010, neither HBO or Focus Features, the latter of which has begun to acquire some of Savoy's movies, has announced any plans to release a new DVD of the film.