There is little in this film that makes sense. An emotionally unbalanced young man (Rick) forces a young woman (Emma) to take him to "the border" because he "accidentally" killed his wealthy father in a fit of rage. While Emma has multiple opportunities to escape or fight back, she doesn't, because Rick is holding her at knifepoint -- a knife that looks like a rubber toy.
This story is interwoven with the Emma's mother and a variety of detectives and police as they try to figure out where Emma is.
There are multiple laugh-out loud moments, despite the actors doing their best.
The best actor in the movie is Lisa Long, who plays the manager at a cheap motel where Rick and Emma spend the night (with neither of them ever having to use the restroom or eat). Lisa has the great face of a character actress; she delivers her lines with the savvy that only comes with years of being a pro, and she gives the movie its only worthwhile scenes (and the reason I rated this 2 stars instead of 1).
A whole convoluted backstory about Emma being a dancer and wanting to give up college, putting her at odds with her mother, making her move in with her best friend (or some friend), where she meets Rick -- this whole story was absolutely unnecessary.
Later, when Rick is getting desperate after almost running over the motel manager, he decides he has to get a new car and accesses his phone. The woman sees him tap in his passcode. Now quite honestly, it's unlikely that she could really see what he tapped in, but, to make it clear to everyone in the universe that she did see what he tapped in, she must tap out the sequence on her leg. Because. That's what you'd do, right?
Then, later, the Emma's mom and one of the detectives question the manager (who was nearly run down, but now looks fine) about which direction Rick drove off in. The manager says with surety, "North."" Since the manager was knocked out on the ground, cold, how would she know which direction they went? This was one of the many laugh-out loud moments in this god-awful joke of a movie.
As the film goes on, the female detective becomes one of the most important characters in the film. It just doesn't make any sense. At one point, instead of immediately alerting the dispatch center, the detective launches into this insanely long story about a murderer who kidnapped (catnapped?) a cat, while the mother stares at her. I mean, it was insane.
Then, while the detectives are having a pow-wow, the mom "sees" "blood" on a parking lot, because she can determine "blood" from ketchup or god-knows what else. This leads her to find Emma's huge black SUV, which she could have seen if she had just looked up. The car is not checked for fingerprints and the detective just keeps telling the mom (who basically has about three facial expressions, and that's pushing it) that "We'll find her soon" -- as if that makes everything okay.
Then we have the big race where everyone is chasing each other, and the rocks to the head (which achieve nothing) and the knives to the throat and the mom who tries to gentle talk Rick into dropping the knife from Emma's throat. Which he does. Emma runs into mom's arms, Rick, on the detective's cue, flings the knife aside (it's obviously rubber or a really cheap-looking "knife") and we are back in a horrid nightclub where Emma has now achieved her dream of dancing on the "stage" of a cheap club while mom looks on with pride.
Although the actors did their best, this was a failure from the first to the last scene. An absolute no.
