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Having already made a splash at Chattanooga Film Festival earlier this summer, THE MISADVENTURES OF VINCE AND HICK rolled into Popcorn Frights with the swagger of a film that knows it’s got crowd-pleaser DNA. On the surface, Trevor Stevens’ road trip crime comedy is everything the press blurbs promise: a Coen-coded caper peppered with Tarantino banter, Rodriguez grit, and just enough comic book flair to make the gunfights pop. It’s an energetic buddy romp stuffed with visual style including black-and-white opening frames bursting into vibrant color like The Wizard of Oz, punchy comic-book onomatopoeias splashed across the screen, and a visual rhythm that borrows from grindhouse, midnight movies, and pop art. But beneath all the genre stylings and blood-splattered hijinks is something that hasn’t been talked about enough: this is a satire of the American hustle economy. THE MISADVENTURES OF VINCE AND HICK is a story about two men on opposite ends of the con-to-survive spectrum, who are both chasing their own scaled-down version of the “dream” and finding only chaos at every turn.
Hick Dunn (Chase Cargill) is fresh out of prison, released for grand theft auto with no job prospects and a single, simple goal…get to Santa Fe for his daughter’s birthday party. Vince Campbell (Heston Horwin), a smooth-talking fake hedge fund bro with a knack for duping people out of their cash, wants to stop doing grunt work for his crime family and make a big score. Their chance encounter outside a pawn shop (where we see Hick just seconds away from selling his wedding ring) sets off a series of increasingly bad decisions. From the jump, their motives are personal and small-scale. Hick isn’t looking to climb the ladder, just to be present in his daughter’s life. Vince isn’t chasing morality, only a shortcut to status. This isn’t Ocean’s Eleven where the thieves are masters of their craft, but instead it’s two half-broke guys scrambling for a foothold in a system designed to keep them precarious. That shared desperation, rather than shared skill, becomes the glue of their uneasy alliance.
The “simple job” they take involves stealing a car from Vince’s cousin and delivering it to a kingpin, which quickly mutates into a tour of the Southwest’s underworld economy. Even their day to day adds to the stress when a pool hall hustle gone wrong nets them more enemies, and the car they’re delivering gets stolen from them. Every supposed “side quest” is just another gig that blows up in their faces, another short-term fix that costs them more in the long run. It’s a structure that mirrors the grind of modern hustle culture, where every opportunity is hazardous and one wrong move can wipe out any gains you’ve made. These guys aren’t criminal masterminds, but freelancers in crime, forever one step behind the bills and one step ahead of disaster.
Even the film’s most colorful supporting characters (ex: pool sharks, shady auctioneers, vengeful bikers) are all locked in their own hustle loops. Everyone’s working an angle, no one’s entirely in control, and the hierarchy is as volatile as the desert weather. It’s a sly way of showing that Vince and Hick’s plight isn’t unique…they’re just part of a bigger ecosystem where every player is trying (and mostly failing) to win at the same game. One of Stevens’ smartest visual choices is the black-and-white-to-color shift when Vince first touches Hick, drawing him into his world. On a stylistic level, it’s a neat Wizard of Oz nod. On a thematic level, it’s Hick stepping into the seductive but dangerous dream of “easy money.” The Technicolor rush that follows is full of sunbaked vistas and lurid splashes of red, which mirrors the intoxication of a big break that’s always just one more job away.
The comic-book flourishes work similarly, stylizing the violence in a way that keeps it fun without sanding off its edge. These are pulp panels in motion, the kind of aesthetic that makes you think you’re watching a fantasy, even when the consequences for the characters are very real. The buddy-comedy dynamic works precisely because Hick and Vince are not naturally compatible. Hick is cautious, measured, still clinging to the possibility of living clean. Vince is impulsive, opportunistic, and allergic to long-term planning. They’re not partners so much as two men whose goals happen to intersect, yet through the course of the film, their grudging respect grows into something like friendship as it is born not out of shared triumphs, but from enduring one disaster after another together.
By the time the plot barrels toward its climax, the stakes have become less about the payout and more about sheer survival. The absurdity peaks here, but so does the emotional payoff. THE MISADVENTURES OF VINCE AND HICK is a riot of color, chaos, and criminal mishaps, but its real strength lies in how it reframes the buddy crime film as a story about surviving in the margins. The Coen/Tarantino/Rodriguez influences are there in the dialogue rhythms, the pop violence, and the sunburnt landscapes, but Stevens and Horwin have baked in something more contemporary: a recognition that the modern outlaw’s grind looks a lot like the gig worker’s grind, just with more bullets and beer bottles.
It’s a film about men who don’t aspire to rule the underworld…just to make rent, keep breathing, and maybe show up for their kid’s birthday. In a cinematic landscape where crime capers often glamorize the payoff, THE MISADVENTURES OF VINCE AND HICK finds its heart in the hustle itself, no matter how many times the wheels come off. If Popcorn Frights had a “Most Likely to Be Quoted in Dive Bars” award, this would win it. But it might also win “Best Hidden Social Commentary.” Because beneath the absurdist chases and the blood-spattered set pieces, it’s quietly asking: what’s the real difference between a crook on the run and a worker chasing the next gig…other than the fact that this one comes with a killer soundtrack.
About Professor Horror
At Professor Horror, we don't just watch horror: we live it, study it, and celebrate it. Run by writers, critics, and scholars who've made horror both a passion and a career, our mission is to explore the genre in all its bloody brillance. From big-budget slashers to underground gems, foreign nightmares to literary terrors, we dig into what makes horror tick (and why it sticks with us). We believe horror is more than just entertainment; it's a mirror, a confession, and a survival story. And we care deeply about the people who make it, love it, and keep it alive.