HIT AND RUN Review. Don't Run To See It.

HIT AND RUN Review

By: RAMA

Was RAMA blown away by this film?

A very weak car chase movie, but a an entertaining romantic comedy, that’s what HIT AND RUN is to me and if the marketing sells it more of a car chase movie than rom-com, don’t get fooled!

This is Dax Shepard’s labor of love, being the co-director of the project along with David Palmer, not to mention that most of the relationship dilemmas in this movie were taken from some of the situations that real life couple Shepard and his co-star Kristen Bell have gone through, plus Shepard, much like his character Charlie Bronson, is also a car nerd, so HIT AND RUN doesn’t get more personal for Shepard than that. This is his baby and it’s not a complete fail..

From the producer of Wedding Crashers – written and directed by and starring comic talent Dax Shepard (NBC’s “Parenthood”), HIT AND RUN is the story of Charlie Bronson (Shepard), a nice guy with a questionable past who busts out of the witness protection program to drive his fiancé (Kristen Bell) from their small home town to Los Angeles so she can land the job of a lifetime. Their road trip grows awkwardly complicated when they are chased by the feds (led by Tom Arnold)… and increasingly dangerous, when Charlie’s former pals, a band of gangsters (led by Bradley Cooper) enter the fray.

I guess my mistake was hoping that I’d get the same excitement that such classics as Bullit and French Connection could provide, I kept forgetting that HIT AND RUN was made with a low budget and under time constraints and so they worked with whatever they could get their hands on and that includes reaching out to circle of friends to see who can help play some of the small supporting roles. If you thought THE MUPPETS last year was full of cameos, wait til you see HIT AND RUN, the number of familiar faces was countless, after a while it can get you to wonder if celeb cameos is all that this movie’s got going for itself.

Real life couple Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell don’t need to try too hard to convince us, they pretty much recreate their own argument and you can definitely sense from the start why one is attracted to the other. Dax’s character embodies a man who’s willing to go the distance for the love of his life, his only weakness is the unwillingness to share much of himself and his past in fear that the love of his life might not like what she sees. Bell’s character is head over heels for Charlie (Dax) but as the engine rolls on, she soon finds out that love is more than just laughs and cuddly moments, it’s also about knowing the real person and that can get overwhelming, the question is will she stick around after finding out the truth about Charlie.
I think Kristen is an underrated actress, there are things about her that I think are working against her because I think she’s genuinely a brilliant actress who can tackle emotional roles but her association with such movies as Forgetting Sarah Marshall and this, may hinder her from proving herself even more and showing the world what she’s truly capable of.
I have mad respect for Dax Shepard, though HIT AND RUN is not perfect, he’s one of those actors who’d tell themselves, ‘I’m going to write my own material and I’m going to make my own movie, damnit’ instead of sitting around waiting for that big break that may or may never come.

The comedy in HIT AND RUN is great, pay close attention to some of the conversations that are going on in this movie because it might make you wonder why Quentin Tarantino hasn’t thought of them before.
I don’t think Tom Arnold is a funny guy, I’ve seen his stand up and it’s just lame, made me wanna cry instead of laugh, but Tom Arnold saying the lines from Shepard’s script, is a funny Tom Arnold. As the bumbling but lovable Marshall, Randy, Arnold nails it.
Another treat to watch is Bradly Cooper who plays the villain, this is probably his funniest role since Phil from The Hangover.
I don’t think the romantic comedy part of this movie is forced, female audiences would find themselves surprised and thankful that they went and watched this, if any I think HIT AND RUN doesn’t do enough to satisfy the male audiences, seeing that the chase sequences were done in safe closed course environments and it’s funny that Shepard is the only one with the cool car while others would have to drive station wagon, cop car and a van, hardly seems like a fair competition to me.

GRADE: 3 out of 5

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