The Runner

The Runner is a well-meaning character study with an admirably cynical ending, but it’s too cold to ever fully draw you in.

The Runner squanders at least one great performance (Fonda’s) and delivers a dispiritingly inert cinematic experience.

There’s no revenge, no murder, and no kidnapping. It’s a low-budget New Orleans Cage movie with some dignity. It would be a pleasure to report that The Runner is also good, but this slim if mildly compelling film lands somewhere between character sketch and morality tale.

The plodding film goes awfully heavy on script exposition and all too light on character depth, leaving Cage and company — including a smartly cast Peter Fonda as his been-there, done-that alcoholic dad — to come up with their own complexity.

The Runner doesn’t lack for drama, but the characters are so thinly and predictably drawn, and the movie’s supposed insights into the art of political compromise so banal, that nothing catches fire.

Writer-director Austin Stark’s film crams a lot into 90 minutes, leaving no room for grace notes, little time for the heart that this truncated story cries out for.

In The Runner, the latest Nicolas Cage film to roll off his one-man assembly line of shoddy cinema, the star looks almost as tired of acting as I am of watching his acting.

While not all of the political angles pan out, there's strong performance by the cast, including Nicolas Cage who delivers one of his better works in recent years. The Runner is not the typical mystery thriller or clumsy action movie Nicolas Cage has been known for these past few years. This is a much deeper take on political drama as well as private ups and downs of a man's life. The cumulative acting prowess succeeds in presenting an appealing drama, but its varying interweaving subplots might be too cumbersome to fully develop. Story revolves around the incident of oil spill, then proceeds towards its aftermath as Senator Pryce (Nicolas Cage) is plagued by series of scandals. It’s a compelling subject as a backdrop against the private life of the Senator, as it displays the man in front of public eyes along with his more honest thoughts and apprehensions. Nicolas Cage has his finer performance in years, this is far more in-depth and intimate dive on a character than practically his half dozen previous roles of cheap action hero or investigator. It's the way he puts on the flaws that make the politician character more identifiable. The supporting characters perform excellently as well, providing different aspects of relationship that Pryce must compensate or struggle with. The actors, despite having different screen time, present interesting subplots. However, this also hampers the pace as not every tangled story angle wrap up nicely. It's almost like a politician who promises too many things, some of them might be delivered, the rest could just be awkwardly shoehorned in. It's commendable to showcase multiple aspect of the drama, even displaying the man's vices, yet the transition between these subplots is sometimes jarring. It may have several flaws, but The Runner is a decent absorbing drama and also a step up on Nicolas Cage's slumping resume.