This short from Australia’s Luke McKay won the Best Picture and Best Director honors at the 2012 New England Underground Film Festival – and, quite frankly, it is among the most exhilarating flicks now on the festival circuit.
In less than 10 minutes, “Hit and Run” deals with the intersection of three people in a tangled emotional web: a young pregnant woman who is on the verge of giving birth while taking a taxi ride to the hospital, her irresponsible ex-boyfriend, and the guy’s best friend. Sucked into this mess are two peripheral figures that become part of the sordid drama: the frazzled taxi driver who may have to play midwife at any second and the angry new girlfriend of the baby-making stud.
How does all of this wind up? Well, there are no spoilers here. But what can be said is that “Hit and Run” is rich with startling imagery, inventive editing, a jolting soundtrack that deftly mixes music and sound effects, a truly imaginative screenplay and an ensemble that brilliantly plumbs the depths of the characters’ predicaments with nary a screen frame wasted.
Quite simply, “Hit and Run” is pure blowtorch cinema. This is short filmmaking at its very best.
Luke is one of the new generation of Australian filmmakers who will be unstoppable in the next few years, pure raw talent at its max