Rent Running on Empty (1988)
3.9 of 5 from 93 ratings
1h 51min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- After antiwar activists Annie and Arthur Pope (Christine Lahti and Judd Hirsh) blew up a napalm lab in 1971, they became lifelong fugitives. They and their children have stayed just one step ahead of the law, running from state to state, job to job, identity to identity. But now elder son Danny (River Phoenix) wants to stop running from a past not his. And to do so, he might never see his on-the-lam family again.
- Actors:
- River Phoenix, Christine Lahti, Judd Hirsch, Jonas Abry, Martha Plimpton, Ed Crowley, L.M. Kit Carson, Steven Hill, Augusta Dabney, David Margulies, Lynne Thigpen, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Sloane Shelton, Justine Johnston, Herb Lovelle, Bobo Lewis, Ronnie Gilbert, Leila Danette, Michael Boatman, Jenny Lumet
- Directors:
- Sidney Lumet
- Producers:
- Griffin Dunne, Amy Robinson
- Writers:
- Naomi Foner
- Studio:
- Warner
- Genres:
- Drama
- Collections:
- The Instant Expert's Guide, The Instant Expert's Guide to Sidney Lumet
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 07/03/2022
- Run Time:
- 116 minutes
- Languages:
- English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono
- Subtitles:
- English Hard of Hearing
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Widescreen 1.85:1
- Colour:
- Colour
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
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Reviews (1) of Running on Empty
Running on Full - Running on Empty review by griggs
Most films about radical politics focus on the act. Running on Empty is more interested in the afterlife: the slow erosion, the routines built around never settling anywhere for too long.
River Phoenix is something else as the son inheriting pressures no teenager should carry. The film refuses easy moral arithmetic — the parents have damaged their children, but there’s real warmth here, and that affection makes everything far more painful than a story about resentment ever could.
At times it’s too composed when it should really wound. I kept willing it to sit inside the pain, not just observe it.
But it stays with you. Consequences, it turns out, don’t run. They wait.
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.