Love and a .45

Directed by C.M. Talkington, Love and a .45 follows Gil Bellows’ Watty Watts and Renée Zellweger’s Starlene Cheatham as they’re forced to go on the run after an impulsive act of violence. Filmmaker Talkington, armed with his own screenplay, has infused Love and a .45 with a relentlessly (and gratingly) off-kilter sensibility that remains a distraction from beginning to end, and there’s little doubt, as a result, that one’s efforts at generating any interest in and sympathy for the protagonists’ exploits fall hopelessly flat – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by an overly familiar narrative rife with derivative, clichéd elements. And although both Bellows and Zellweger turn in compelling, charismatic work, with their efforts heightened by the genuine chemistry between their respective figures, Love and a .45 has otherwise been overrun with egregiously quirky supporting characters that slowly-but-surely render the picture’s few positive attributes moot. (This is particularly true of the two eye-rollingly odd hitman on Watty and Starlene’s tail.) By the time the predictably less-than-fresh climax rolls around, which even boasts a hackneyed Mexican standoff, Love and a .45 has undoubtedly cemented its place as an unmitigated disaster that wears out its welcome almost immediately.

* out of ****