The screenplay was written by Walter Hill and Amy Holden Jones, based on Jim Thompson's 1958 novel of the same name.

The film stars Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, Michael Madsen, James Woods and Jennifer Tilly.

The film flopped at the box office, but it enjoyed lucrative success in the home video market.

[2] Carter "Doc" McCoy and his wife Carol are taking target practice with pistols when Rudy arrives to propose they break a Mexican drug lord's nephew out of jail for a $300,000 payment.

The job is successful, but it turns out the drug lord wanted his nephew free to kill him.

Rudy is waiting with a getaway plane, but he sees police cars and leaves Doc behind.

After a year in a Mexican jail, Doc sends Carol to mob boss Jack Benyon, who is looking to put together a select team of experts to rob a dog track in Arizona.

At the track, while Doc is breaking into the vault, a guard pulls a gun and is shot by Hansen in a panic.

The thieves escape by creating a diversion with a bomb under a gas truck and leave with the cash, totaling over one million dollars.

Doc expected this and is ready with his own weapon, shooting Rudy and leaving him for dead.

There continues to be tension between the pair, particularly when Carol loses the money to a con man at a train station in Flagstaff.

They proceed to the rustic Border Hotel in El Paso, owned by Doc's friend Gollie, to get new passports and identities so they can escape to Mexico.

Benyon's men, led by Jim Deer want the money and arrive in El Paso.

A long and bloody gunfight ensues with Doc and Carol shooting it out with Benyon's men in the halls and stairwells of the hotel.

Doc and Carol make their way out of the hotel just as the police arrive, and hijack a pickup truck driven by "Slim", an old cowboy, forcing him to drive them to the border.

After safely crossing into Mexico, they buy Slim's truck from him and drive southward, making their getaway.

Hill and Baldwin were friendly – at one stage they were going to make The Fugitive together before being replaced by Andrew Davis and Harrison Ford.

According to Baldwin, Hill always wanted to film his original script of The Getaway before it had been changed by Sam Peckinpah.

"[3] Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger had fallen in love while making The Marrying Man together and he asked her to play the female role.

"[5] Jennifer Tilly said she loved doing the nude scene with Michael Madsen: "At first, it was scary, but you know there's something very freeing about taking your clothes off in front of 50 people.