I went to see Hit and
Run because I saw the husband and wife creative team (and stars) Dax
Shepard and Joy Bryant on Pierce Morgan
talking about the movie. So call me crazy (and I know you will) but I’ve always
had a thing for Dax Shepard, as he seems to me to be kinda gayishly cute.
Anyway, the couple talked about the movie as an ‘indie’ film, meaning that it
is not your typical mainstream fare. I also noted that on Rotten Tomatoes the movie was semi-dismissed as ‘raunchy’ -- which
of course made me really want to see it. Not for the reasons you might think;
it just seemed to me that everyone who was talking about the movie was talking
in code. Well I saw it yesterday. Sure enough there is a gay cop in the movie
replete with badly dyed red hair. He’s cruising people on ‘pouncer,’ which is
of course a NOT very subtly disguised reference to the gay cruising app
‘Grindr.’ The gay cop is a major/minorish sort of character. But there’s also
Dax’s tendency to ramble on about gay stuff. At one point he makes the somewhat
offensive but rather accurate remark that black men view white men as women (ie
vulnerable and effeminate) and also, that white men view Asian men as women
(ditto). These remarks could of course be viewed as racist, sexist, and
homophobic (the triple whammy of political incorrectness!). The film tries to
head off such perceptions by having Bryant, early on, castigate Shepard for
using the word ‘gay’ in a derogatory way.
She says -- “I mean, would it be alright for me to call my purse the
n-word? Like no!” -- or something
to that effect -- which does make a kind of funny, wacky sense in the context of their conversation.
What I’m trying to say is that this movie is -- well, um, smart -- and even
(God help me!) well written at times; it toys with deliciously dangerous stuff
in a witty way. But of course the film is being promoted as a ‘raunchy’ comedy.
Dax and Joy are obviously a pair of sharp cookies, and they were somehow able
to sneak a teensy bit of intelligence into a run-of–the-mill Hollywood car
chase movie, by advertising the film as a ‘raunchy’ sex farce, ala American Pie, albeit with an
‘alternative’ flair. I’m just kind of amazed that amidst the endless tedious
remakes of Spiderman and Total Recall there exists, in a
Hollywood movie, somewhere, the tiniest germ of an idea or two (however
politically correct or even offensive those ideas might be). I hope the
Hollywood Bigwigs don’t find out; it seems they are pretty dead set on keeping
even a flash of actual adult braininess out of most standard flicks.
