A movie-obsessed girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) from middle-of-nowhere Nebraska ditches her drunken parents, dons a halter top and short shorts, and starts hitchhiking to Las Vegas, but her journey is derailed after she falls in with a coke-snorting bimbo (Blake Lively) and a psychotic cowboy (Eddie Redmayne). Director Derick Martini (Lymelife) ambles back and forth between tomfoolery and strained seriousness; such tonal waffling would be forgivable if not for the gritty subject matter (the way he glosses over a climactic rape scene is particularly bothersome). Martin Scorsese has expressed admiration for Martini, so it’s not surprising that Moretz’s preteen protagonist is a dead ringer for Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver, quoting Dirty Harry as she studies herself in a full-length mirror.
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