Film reviews: Hit & Run | On the Road | Private Peaceful | Big Boys Gone Bananas
Hit & Run (15)
***
A motormouthed getaway driver (Dax Shepard) hides out in a sleepy backwater under the witness protection programme until his girlfriend (Kristen Bell) needs a ride to Los Angeles and a shot at the job of her dreams. Breaking cover results in cross country car chases, and this action comedy is just as inclined to take off-road digressions into domestic spats, an octogenarian orgy, Bradley Cooper with blond dreadlocks and rather too many jokes about jail rape. As a vehicle for Shepard, who also wrote and co-directed this jalopy, it’s more hit and miss.
• Cameo, Edinburgh, Thursday only
On The Road (15)
***
After tackling the story of Che Guevara on a bike in Motorcycle Diaries, Walter Salles makes an honourable attempt at the famously unfilmable Beat touchstone, with Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund as the alter egos of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. On a hedonistic trundle around America, they encounter Kristen Stewart, Amy Adams, Kirsten Dunst, Steve Buscemi and Viggo Mortensen. It’s a good-looking film, but strangely passionless, and at 137 mins it feels like a very long road.
• Selected release from Friday
Private Peaceful (12A)
***
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Hide AdHard on the hoofs of War Horse, another Michael Morpurgo novel arrives, this time with Private Tommo Peaceful (George MacKay) a young First World War soldier reflecting on the sibling rivalry with his brother (Jack O’Connell) which leads one of them to find himself facing the firing squad at dawn. Pat O’Connor gives the story a sturdy if rather old-fashioned treatment.
• Selected release from Friday
Big Boys Gone Bananas (tbc)
***
In this follow-up to Bananas! about the legal fight by Nicaraguan workers against fruit and veg megacorp Dole, Swedish journalist Fredrik Gertten documents Dole’s lawsuit and media campaign against him. You’ll look more closely at the stickers on the peel after this.
• Dundee Contemporary Arts, Tuesday