Hit And Run (2008)

JANUARY 17, 2009

GENRE: CRAP, REVENGE
SOURCE: DVD (STORE RENTAL)

Another day, another shitty movie based on a thin premise. But whereas Blackout at least had good direction and the occasional exciting setpiece, Hit And Run is just abysmal in every way, from start to finish. Worse, it’s almost the same movie as Stuck, which did just about everything this movie does, only much better. Plus I already saw that, so it’s sort of like eating a nice steak and then trying to enjoy a Hungry Man meal, but its still frozen. And about ten years old. And has feces mixed in.

The main problem of the many that Hit and Run suffers is that not a single person in the movie is likable. Our heroine (Laura Breckenridge, whoever that is) is a fucking idiot who manages to do every possible thing wrong that she can (I think she even invents a few ways to dig herself deeper in trouble), and the guy she hits is a muttering bastard who is bipolar, which obviously means that he murders other folks in his attempt to... whatever it is he is attempting to do with the girl. He has several opportunities to kill her, but never does. Yet he kills his own wife for trying to set the girl free? The closest thing the movie gets to sympathetic characters are the parrots.

Yes, the parrots. In one of cinema’s most ridiculous subplots, Breckenridge has to pick up her grandmother’s parrots from the airport. I can’t even begin to point out how little sense this makes (for starters – the grandmother is otherwise never mentioned), but its sole reason for existing is to have the parrots occasionally say incriminating things at inopportune times. But there are no cops or snooping types; the only three people in the movie all know what happened and who was responsible, so what good do the parrots serve? Just screen padding.

And the padding is plentiful. None of the movie would work if anyone behaved like a normal human being, but even factoring that in, there’s still another half hour’s worth of pointless bullshit. We see Breckenridge clean her car out seemingly in real time, drive her car over and over into a tree in order to cover up the smaller dent from when she hit the guy (a scene that has no payoff, since the bumper is removed entirely before she takes the car to be looked at again), etc. And at one point the “bad guy” (the usually dependable Kevin Corrigan) chains her to the car and... just drives around. He even stops for gas.

It doesn’t help that director Enda McCallion apparently prepared for his/her (don’t really care) movie by watching Star Wars and a bunch of Brian DePalma films. So we get goofy wipes and split screens sequences thrown around at random, plus a lot of hyper-edit montage scenes with heavily saturated colors and such. None of it aids the story (such as it is) in any way, which just makes it even more annoying.

The closest thing to a saving grace this movie has is the audio track. We begin with “Float On” from Modest Mouse (a Rock Band favorite!) and for once, the girl is actually singing along to it, not just going “Ba ba baaaa” while whatever song they could clear got tossed in during editing. Then later in the movie she’s watching TV and there’s a movie being advertised that promised “Murder, mayhem, and aliens”. Sounds way better than this one.

At the top of the DVD there is a promo for MGM that celebrates their legacy. We see clips from Rocky, Rain Man, Thelma and Louise, etc. I think it’s a safe bet that a clip from this POS won’t be added to the spot.

What say you?

4 comments:

  1. I just finished watching this one instantly at Netflix. I actually thought it was a decent (but not great) look into a real type of horror, but then at the 55 minute mark it took a sudden turn and wound up as typical genre garbage that we've all seen a thousand times.

    And I don't know about you, but I found the audio mix atrocious! I could barely hear the dialogue, but then my ears started bleeding when the music began to play. Crickets chirped louder than the characters spoke! I thought that maybe it was just an online-viewing issue, but I've heard from others that they suffered the same problems. Did you notice anything off with it?

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  2. I loved this movie! Laura Breckenridge was awesome as the heroine who just made every wrong move..which by the way is very possible to do when you are under such ridiculously terrifying circumstances.
    Doesn't hurt that she's hot either.
    Plus, i love her Jeep Wrangler.

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  3. This movie was dumb. Could have been a lot better, redo this movie.

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  4. This movie made absolutely NO sense! I mean seriously No sense.

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