Gripped by Guilt
Joanna Kendall (Margaret Colin) has the perfect life; a nice house, a good husband, kids and although she is greying she manages to hide her roots from her husband and friends. Then one rainy day she takes her eyes off of the road for a split second and knocks over a young girl on a bike, with no phone she takes the decision to leave the girl to call for help before returning. But when she returns she not only discovers the emergency services already there but angry parents who are saying who could leave an injured young girl like that. Scared Joanna returns home without saying anything and decides to keep it to herself, fearful over what people will think despite having gone for help. But living with a secret and detective Rico (Lisa Vidal) investigating it is not easy especially with the community so incensed by what happened.
I have read in quite a few reviews of "Hit and Run" that this Lifetime movie is based on a true story and whilst I don't remember seeing it mentioned it wouldn't surprise me as this storyline of a woman trying to hide her involvement in a hit and run sounds like a true story. It is also a movie which serves up two sides with one side being about detective Rico trying to track down who was driving the car which means we have some CSI stuff from footprints in the mud matched up and so on. It is the more cliche side of the movie but still entertaining with Lisa Vidal doing her best to make a cliche character less cliche.
But the real interesting side of "Hit and Run" is the observing of Joanna as she deals with the mess she has got herself in to, that feeling of guilt and the need to own up but the dread brought on by hearing others condemnations causing her to carry on suffering in silence. How this plays out is not actually of interest but it is the performance of Margaret Colin that makes it work and Colin is such a likeable actress that you feel for her especially when this set up sees her trying to do the right thing which turned in to the wrong thing and then spiralled out of control.
What this all boils down to is that "Hit and Run" is one of Lifetime movies more interesting movies as it becomes less about the story it is telling and more of an examination of guilt and how it eats away at a person. As such the success of "Hit and Run" comes down to a good performance from Margaret Colin but also nice writing which allows the depth of guilt come to the surface in the shape of traits rather than being drama, in fact it is when it goes for big drama it becomes too typical.
