Hot Pursuit

Stars: Reese Witherspoon, Sofia Vergara, John Carroll Lynch, Robert Kazinsky

Director: Anne Fletcher

Mismatched-partners cop movies have a lot to answer for. A long way after Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy in The Heat comes this rancid romp with Witherspoon and Vergara, the former a diminutive, bungling, by-the-book cop called Cooper (just like McCarthy in Spy), the latter as Daniella Riva, a tightly dressed chica who is slated to testify, along with her husband, against a drugslord.

When Cooper's superior and Daniella's husband are both killed in a shootout, the chalk-and-cheese pair are thrown together in a prolonged flight both from the drugslord's men and from a pair of dirty cops, all out to eliminate the winsome widow.

Result: a raucous, shrill and desperately unfunny road-trip 'action' comedy in which the two stars (both producers on the movie) over-emote desperately in hot pursuit of laughs that, under Anne Fletcher's leaden direction, never come.

David Quinlan

USA 2015. UK Distributor: Warner Brothers. Colour by deluxe.
88 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 12A.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 0, Violence/Horror 1, Drugs 1, Swearing 0.

Review date: 28 Jul 2015