When you remake one of Steve McQueen's best-known movies, comparisons are inevitable. Alec Baldwin is believable as the hardened criminal 'Doc' McCoy but where McQueen was able to suggest that there may be mitigating factors in the way his life turned out, Baldwin appears much harder, although he does show that there is at least honour among thieves. When all is said and done, this is a fairly straight remake, and the differences are all in the playing.

Doc McCoy, facing a long prison sentence, sends his wife Carol, played by Kim Basinger, to ask for help from a corrupt businessman, Jack Benyon, played by James Woods. In return, Doc agrees to pull a robbery for Benyon. However the payment Benyon asks of Carol McCoy is beyond what Doc had in mind. She pays the price and Doc is released. Doc does the robbery but from this point on a series of double crosses sees Doc and Carol on the run – pursued by other criminals, the law and tensions between themselves. It all comes to a head with a shootout in a hotel in Texas.

It is hard to believe that the McQueen version of "The Getaway" is over 40 years old, and that the King of Cool is now long gone. Of course, anyone familiar with the earlier version will know exactly what happens next although the sex scenes featuring Baldwin and Basinger register a few points higher on the Richter scale.

In the end, the success or otherwise of this version comes down to nuance and shades of meaning – the way Shakespeare's plays are open to a new interpretation, giving them relevance for each generation. Not that the script for "The Getaway" has much to do with Shakespeare, nor likely to be required reading for high school students in the future, but it does provide a suitable vehicle for Baldwin and Basinger.

Alec Baldwin will not replace the memory of Steve McQueen in this role, but Kim Basinger fares better when compared to Ali McGraw. Basinger projects a sultry presence; she is not a particularly animated actress, and the role of Carol McCoy seems tailor-made for her. It is only when she exchanges light dialogue with Richard Farnsworth's character near the end of the movie that you realise how heavy going the rest of the film is, exposing a fundamental problem – The McCoys are not fun people and it is hard for the audience to really like them.

The subplot involving McCoy's ex-partner, Rudy, and his encounter with the veterinarian and his wife is just as nasty in this version with Michael Madsen creating a truly repellent character.

Where this movie shines is in its production values and solid pacing; the action is exciting and the locations are interesting. Maybe thirty years from now, another group of filmmakers will feel the time is right for another interpretation of "The Getaway", but if they do, I think the King of Cool will still rule.

Doc (Alec Baldwin) and Carol McCoy (Kim Basinger) are a married criminal couple. Rudy Travis (Michael Madsen) comes to them with a job. A drug lord wants to break out his nephew from American prison. In reality, he just wants to kill him. They bring him to Mexico. Rudy abandons Doc who is captured by the Mexican police. Carol uses all her sexual wilds to get mob boss Jack Benyon (James Woods) to help get Doc released. Jim Deer Jackson (David Morse) is Benyon's right hand thug. Benyon puts Doc in charge of a dog track robbery. He's forced to lead newcomer Frank Hansen (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and reunite with Rudy. Rudy tries to double-cross him again. He shoots Rudy who survives. Rudy first takes the Carveys hostage and then takes the wife Fran Carvey (Jennifer Tilly) as his partner.

Relationship complications complicates this violent crime relationship movie. This is a remake of the 1972 Sam Peckinpah movie. Real life husband and wife Basinger and Baldwin inject problematic relationship flow. I understand the attempt but it's hard to fall for this couple. They are an old married couple who is just as ready to fight as to make passionate love. It's movie life come true and nobody will cry over a divorce. The violence is fitting for a Peckinpah remake but others have taken up the mantle and surpassed it. There are some interesting aspects to this movie but also enough problems to sink it.

It's a pretty decent movie as these things go. Baldwin is Doc McCoy, newly released from prison in order to commit a high-end robbery. Faced with cheating partners, he and his wife, Basinger, make off with a gym bag full of large notes and are pursued throughout the Southwest to the Mexican border, where they finally take off on their own. There is some conflict internal to the family because Basinger had to allow the head of the parole board, also the manager of the robbery, access to her succulent body, and Baldwin resents this, sometimes violently, for the first two thirds of the movie.

Lots of action, more explicit sex and brutality, and competent performances, yet something is missing. The chief subtrahend is originality. It's a remake of Sam Pekinpah's film of the same name, with Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw, from the 1960s. Pekinpah's production was edgier, with unexpected incidents, and used some magnificent locations in west Texas. And the production design and set dressing were superior. Even so quotidian a setting as a garbage dump outside of El Paso reeks with atmosphere in Pekinpah's film. Here, it's just a garbage dump. The same can be said of the interior -- and the exterior, for that matter -- of the seedy hotel in which the final shoot out takes place.

But it isn't so much these details that detract from one's enjoyment of the film, it's the realization that it was done -- and done better -- almost thirty years earlier by a director in whose veins the balance between booze and talent was proportionate. How much in the way of credit should accrue to writers, directors, and producers who simply imitate a successful earlier movie in an attempt to cash in on its popularity and on the loosening of moral strictures in Hollywood? The remake is not quite shot-for-shot but almost, and much of the dialog is identical.

Generally speaking, the performances here aren't bad, even though Baldwin is groomed on his release from the slams like a Hollywood star and lacks McQueen's jailhouse haircut. Kim Basinger does a bit better in the role of prisoner's wife than Ali McGraw did, for that matter. McGraw, unfortunately for her, cute as she was in her darkly furry way, always sounded as if she'd just graduated from Wellesley, which at one time she had.

And the direction is competent without adding much to the goings on. Slow motion is used where Pekinpah had used it. And, if you want an instructive scene, watch the trio of bad guy Michael Madsen, Jennifer Tilly, and the DVM James Stevens when Madsen and Tilly become playful and start throwing take-out food at one another -- fried chicken and french fries. Madsen, without provocation, becomes angry and orders Tilly back into the front seat. In Pekinpah's movie the take out is barbecued ribs with sticky tomato sauce and they're tossed back and forth with abandon. The bad guy remains in the back seat and, pelted about the face with a couple of hefty ribs, grows visibly more irritated until he ends the game in an outburst of pique. Both the players and the car's interior are coated with Texas barbecue sauce. There's hardly any comparison in the effectiveness of the two, almost identical, incidents. Pekinpah's is superior.

None of this should stand as a condemnation of the remake itself. If it stands alone, it's suspenseful and diverting. The world is largely divided into good guys and bad. That usually makes for easily digested entertainment and this movie delivers the goods.