I saw Hot Pursuit in theaters because I adore Reese Witherspoon and sometimes I need to sit down with a comedy that lacks romance as the lead genre. It can be quite refreshing in my humble opinion.
Hot Pursuit is about Rose Cooper, an officer who was raised in the force and has followed in her father’s footsteps… Unfortunately because of the life she was raised in she puts her job before everything else and often uses it at the most inappropriate of times, like on a first date. Because of how serious she takes her job, to which she follows to the letter of the law, she is a great police officer on paper but in actuality she lacks the nuance it takes to be a police officer; like when someone yells “I call shot gun!” they almost universally mean they are calling the front passenger seat… hehe, You got Coopered!
So she spends her job behind a glass wall taking evidentiary inventory rather than on a beat.
One day, though, she is put back out on the field to help with a witness transfer for a big case that would derail a huge portion of the drug cartel led by Vicente Cortez… because the procedure mandates that a female officer must be present for the transfer of a female witness and they handwave other options because PLOT. Enter Sofia Vergara as Daniella Riva, the wife of the man who is going to testify. Driving to their luxurious mansion, Cooper and her partner, Detective Jackson (Richard T. Jones) they are ambushed before they can even get their witnesses out of the building by two different groups, both of whom seem to be out to kill the witnesses.
Imagine this plot with jokes about age and height and a couple of jabs at the fact that Cooper Tasered the mayor’s son in such a way that he spilled alcohol over himself in the process and was immediately set ablaze. Hot Pursuit has a lot of recurring jokes that give it an original charm, some of which the trailers played to death over and over again but then that’s what trailers do.
It’s a cute movie with a couple of faces you may recognize around Hollywood right now. Matthew Del Negro is currently on Scandal (interestingly he’s another transplant from The West Wing, make of that what you will), Robert Kazinksy played the devilishly-handsome-I-wish-had-survived Vampire Macklyn Warlow on True Blood, and Michael Mosley was on the recently-cancelled Sirens on USA. Characters are introduced and left right but the main focus is always on Witherspoon’s Officer Cooper and Vergara’s Daniella Riva and the duo play off one another in a cute yet catty fashion that is entertaining to watch.
Take a moment, grab some popcorn, and check this one out when it comes out on DVD!
Lloydd Marshall Books 