With Alien: Earth, Timothy Olyphant returns to the scene of the crime: FX, where he went from stealing scenes in uneven movies like The Girl Next Door or Gone in 60 Seconds to giving an unequivocally great leading performance in Justified, one of the best TV shows of its era. Since Justified ended (and was briefly revived), television has been the primary outlet for Olyphant’s laconic yet electric style. Sometimes he’ll pop up in a small role for a name-brand director like Quentin Tarantino or David O. Russell, but his strong reputation and steady work as a TV actor have seemingly allowed him to get a little choosier with film roles. That’s good for Olyphant but bad for movie fans, who get fewer opportunities to see the actor enliven a preposterous film like A Perfect Getaway, a little-seen thriller that deserves to be mentioned alongside his more prestigious work.
This forgotten 2009 horror movie should have made Timothy Olyphant a star
A Perfect Getaway might not look like franchise material, but Olyphant's character could have carried on
