Run with the Hunted

The film boasts pungent atmosphere, as well as hard-hitting performances by leading man Michael Pitt and such reliably good character actors as Ron Perlman and Isiah Whitlock Jr. Unfortunately, the promising elements never coalesce into a satisfying or engrossing whole.

Run with the Hunted kind of rattles around like a racoon confined in a tiger cage. The milieu and characters are here, with “Lost Boys” references that don’t really hide the “Oliver Twist” structure. The “twists” in this “Oliver” are entirely predictable, including the finale.

On all accounts, filmmaker John Swab’s gratuitous and grave Run with the Hunted fails to live up to the promise of its premise. Instead, it comes off as a lunkheaded exercise in self-aggrandizing mental masturbation.

Irritating film.

Some of the film’s narrative threads are frustratingly unresolved, while others are wrapped up in arbitrary fashion.