The title would work better if the two hot women were the ones doing the pursuing, as opposed to being pursued – and indeed, if the film were funny in the first place. Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara have a terrible, sub-Thelma-&-Louise act as an uptight cop and the Colombian drug-baron trophy wife she is escorting to witness protection, forced to go on the run together and surrounded on all sides by gun-toting criminals and corrupt law officers. (Brit actor Robert Kazinsky gets the young Brad Pitt role as a sexy young guy they pick up on the road.) It’s not that Witherspoon can’t do comedy exactly: she was famously great in Alexander Payne’s classic Election – but there she was playing it dead straight, and, crucially, had a great screenplay to work with. Here she’s strained and unsure, unable to be funny herself or let her co-star be funny either; Vergara can never really let rip with any really scene-stealing standup material because she must ultimately cede importance to her counterpart in every scene. Witherspoon has a bizarre disguise routine at one point, dressing up as a mop-haired boyband-style youth to infiltrate a gangster-family quinceañera. She really does look tiny – and lost.
