All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl." So wrote Jean-Luc Godard way back in 1961, and some 50 years later people are still testing that theory. The latest young director to do so is Derick Martini, whose "Hick" stars Chloe Grace Moretz ("Hugo," "Kick-Ass") as a jailbait teen runaway, and a Smith & Wesson .45 as the gun.
"Hick" is based on a novel by Andrea Portes, which was quite successful among a demographic that was mainly female and of the inclination to walk a bit on the wild side during their long-gone teenage years. (Reactions to the film have also largely split along a male-female divide, but more on that later.)
As one might expect from a film called "Hick," we're dropped into a stereotypical white-trash nowhere in rural Nebraska, where parents think celebrating their daughter's 13th birthday in a bar — until they get fall-down drunk — is acceptable behavior. When Mom (Juliette Lewis) runs off with a realtor and Dad (Anson Mount) is too hungover to do much about it, 13-year-old Luli (played by a then-13-year-old Moretz) says "Screw this," packs a bag and the .45 — one of her birthday presents — and hits the road for Los Angeles with dreams of the movies and finding a "sugar daddy."