HIT & RUN

year: 2012 cast: Dax Shepard, Kristen Bell, Bradley Cooper, Beau Bridges rating: **1/2

The more we learn about Yul Perrkins a.k.a. “Charles Bronson,” a kindhearted small town suburban guy with beautiful blond girlfriend Annie Bean, played by writer/director/star Dax Shepard's real life flame Kristen Bell, the more there is to like about him. But that’s not how Annie sees it. How can an intelligent progressive girl – driven to L.A. where a lucrative administration job awaits – deal with a former getaway driver who isn’t the sensitive dream man she thought she knew so well?

There are a few terrific hot rod sequences: our wolf-in-sheep’s-garb hero owns a slick black Lincoln Continental that he wasn’t supposed to keep after being put in the Witness Protection Program three years earlier. And that’s the main thing Annie learns about this road savvy fella, who eventually has an eclectic assortment of oddballs on his tail including Annie’s passive/aggressive ex boyfriend; the boyfriend’s gay cop brother; Tom Arnold as a clingy U.S. Marshall determined to "protect" Yul at all costs; and a trio of vengeful bank robbers led by dread-haired Bradley Cooper as Dmitri, straight out of the Tarantino book of pontificating thugs. When too many characters dog-pile on during the second act, you’ll wish for those initial car chases that, with old school tunes soulfully counter-balancing the road-shredding testosterone, bring us back to films like THE GETAWAY, VANISHING POINT and SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT. But even these scenes are interrupted by conversations and/or arguments between any set of couples that, while sometimes humorous and clever, grow annoying and tiresome after a while.

The main problem with HIT & RUN is Annie’s tyrannical determination to turn her wolf back into a sheep, continuously hounding him with guilt-ridden lectures about what to say and how to say what he should be saying, even if he’s thinking something else i.e. continual lessons on political correctness. You’ll wonder how such a cool footloose guy, who once helped rob thirteen banks and renamed himself after a bad ass actor, could put up with this kind of ultra-evaluating albatross... Then again, she is extremely hot. Sorry Annie, if that came out sexist… But a guy speaks his mind sometimes – get used to it!!!