Hit and Run 2012

It’s essentially a chase film, revolving around Dax’s character Charlie Bronson (a faux name, yes) who helps his girlfriend get to L.A. with three entities in pursuit: a useless cop, a pathetic ex-boyfriend and a gang member from Charlie’s shrouded past.

The script, while never laugh-out-loud funny, is consistently chuckle-inducing. Every character nails the delivery, showing Dax’s strong control over his own material. They reel back and correct themselves on some of the more discriminatory gags, most noticeably when Charlie drops the ‘fag’ bomb, apologising for it a minute later - Hit and Run proving both liberally humorous and humorously liberal.

The story simmers for the first half hour, but when conflict finally drops, the resolutions don’t play out as you’d expect, with the characters solving their issues through reason and understanding rather than overtly contrived and exaggerated reactions. It’s a refreshing defiance of traditional rom-com conventions, most evident in the scenes where Charlie reveals his prior life to his girlfriend.

With some likeable characters and a script that mixes laughs and charm, Hit and Run is well worth a watch. However, it never presents anything beyond ‘likeable’, the car-chase scenes are strangely monotonous and the anticlimactic end dampens the experience. Hide