Runner | Final Trailer | 16+ | In Theaters Sep 11 | Alan Ritchson, Owen Wilson | Angel<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nPOSITIVES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the second and far superior film with a near-identical title released this week, Runner is an anxiously energetic action-fueled romp that offers a refreshing throwback to the action comedies of yesteryear, that not only acknowledged the stupidity of the subgenre, but openly embraced it with mindlessly enthralling thrills that help cement Angel Studios first legitimately entertaining engagement to date. Being that Waugh is the very same director who helmed Expend4bles, Need For Speed, and Hidden Strike, three macho meandered films that substitute craft for camaraderie, it’s needless to say that my expectations in this film were understandably quite low, but Waugh supplants enough supercharged sensibilities to his elicited fun and frenzy to the execution of his stir crazy environments that help bring to life the urgency and intensity of some daringly audacious action set pieces, all performed enthrallingly indulging by the definition of the articulated velocity, which allows us to coherently interpret every bone-shattering influence at the director’s disposal. The action itself is far from the most impressive that I’ve experienced, even this year, however there’s a spontaneity factor to so much of the chaotic tug-of-war struggles that feed exceptionally to the already illustrated abundance of stakes that take shape overhead in the narrative, and as a result we’re not only fed a creative versatility of commanding set pieces, but also a maintained urgency over the air of Waugh’s direction, which allows the 92-minute runtime to transpire fluidly throughout the proceedings, without anything crucial to the unforeseen emotionality or meticulously inserted twists that continue to reevaluate the shifting circumstances of this centerpiece conflict. While the twists themselves do more to appraise value to the established stakes, rather than drop our jaws with out-of-nowhere surprises, they do help to appraise motivational desperation to the intended designs of the centralized characters, and while we may know exactly where all of this inevitably ends, based on the familiarity of the script’s constructive tangibles, how we get to that desired destination is what ultimately matters most to the integrity of the experience, especially alongside an effortlessly indulging dynamic between Ritchson and Wilson that provides enough fuel for the long-distance tank. Like most buddy action pair-ups before them, Hank and Ben’s ice-breaking introduction has each of them awkwardly feeling each other out, but once they’re thrust together in a conflict that leaves them very few trustworthy options away from each other, the charming chemistry of their budding bromance dynamic starts to take shape, and it soon becomes painstakingly apparent that the film rides its greatest momentum when these two are steering the storytelling, particularly once the speculative layers of Hank’s flawed backstory are brought to the surface, establishing a bond of formidable trust between them in ways that feel dismissively believable with how Ritchson and Wilson execute these characters to perfection. Being that Ritchson already looks the part with a physical resemblance to a Sherman tank, it’s the charismatic charm and empathetic emotionality that takes center stage in his distinguished performance, specifically when being asked to convey so much insightfully articulate pain and regretful longing in a character who has and continues to face adversarial demons in his everyday road to recovery. As a result, those softly intimate moments are the best to silence the prematurely perceived one-dimensionality of Ritchson’s capability, but beyond them it’s the proven dependability towards physically grueling sequences that effortlessly convey his appeal as the next big action star in cinema, where Ritchson never strays far from the driver’s seat of the movie’s beneficial gains. As for Owen Wilson, while he’s essentially relegated to the same kind of mind-numbingly mumbling performance that we’ve seen from him for nearly thirty years, there is an eagerly adventurous spirit to his candidly comedic portrayal that maturely rises to the occasion whenever the suspense is at its most palpably combustible for a scene’s integrity, where whether in the effects of Waugh’s calculative direction, or Wilson’s own awareness over the tonal plausibility of each scene, he scales back the improvisational commentary when it matters most, allowing the film and his influential performance to maintain so much of the aforementioned urgency and overwhelming stakes from such a dangerously unpredictable environment. Beyond everything else previously heralded, the supercharged cinematography from Lorenzo Senatore also goes a long way towards flourishing the energetically enthralling component of each ambitious sequence, with Senatore seamlessly sifting through the claustrophobic confines of a car with the accessibly impressive movements that don’t feel constrained or condensed by the imagery of their limited environments. While the camera contortions between the conversations of Hank and Ben are artistically enamoring enough to flourish momentum to their building bond, the most remarkable feats are ultimately paid to Senatore’s ability to casually drift from one vehicle to the next within this all-encompassing conflict, offering an anxiously immersive bridge between sides that goes easier than expected on the enacted editing techniques, all the while providing some flashy sizzle that seamlessly replicates the whisking velocity from these clashing vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NEGATIVES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While I found Runner to be a mostly engaging surprise in summarization, some individualized components to its stunted screenplay leave slightly more to be desired in unloaded originality, particularly in its ineffective humor and weak primary antagonist, which each weigh the film down so remarkably during some of the movie’s greatest moments of foundational character building. This is especially the case for the latter, who is the very embodiment of every foreign adversary you’ve ever encountered in these kinds of movies, but even worse when the script deviates undecidedly between being adaptably intelligent and surreally stupid, whenever the movie requires him to be, and considering he’s already given the daunting task of colliding with a physical specimen such as Ritchson, I believe that the casting should’ve opted for a nearly identical counterpart, especially considering so many of his physical conflicts alongside our protagonist strain believability entirely on the bulk of their disproportionate mass. As for the former, while Waugh’s direction is definitely more preoccupied with action over comedy, it overlooks those foundation building moments between Hank and Ben, that serve as a welcome mat for audiences to invest naturally into these characters, and considering these gags aren’t written with any semblance of unconventional creativity or directional intention, they instead feel like improvisational exploits from Wilson, without anything remotely resembling a memorably effective punchline in the extent of its runtime. On top of this, like every other Angel Studios film that I’ve experienced to date, the accompanying score from Charlie Nguyen Kim also goes a long way to wipe interpretability away from the integrity of these scenes, featuring these heavily on-the-nose kind of instrumental compositions that spoon-feed how the audience should feel about these characters, long before we’ve ever had a chance to experience it for ourselves. This is especially the case for the untimely arrival of our established antagonist, who even long before he shot or killed a character, he’s supplanted with this ominously gloomy theme that immediately catapults our own speculatively preconceived hesitation about his intentions, and while it might be a small part to such underdeveloped characterization on the antagonist side, it’s nevertheless a glaring example of telegraphed intentions from a studio that can’t effectively spell or define subtlety, ultimately leaving many of the movie’s soberingly stirring moments flatlined by blandly one-dimensional music that stood out distractingly rather than imbedded naturally, leaving no mistakes about the intentioned direction of these characters, whether we like it or not. Aside from the weakly ineffective humor, underwhelming adversarial antagonist, and on-the-nose orchestral accompaniment, the film is also ailed extraneously by Angel Studios own sanitarily scrubbed influence over the proceedings, specifically with some garishly artificial coloring to touched up violent imagery, in order to secure a PG-13 rating. What draws attention to this unfortunate aspect are the strangely surreal editing choices in post that not only aggressively deviate away from gruesome imagery whenever its depiction can’t be avoided, but also the wounds themselves from afar conjuring these hilariously artificial purple tints to feel anything other than blood, and when you consider the vitriolic measures of its characters enacted violence (Especially during the climax), the audacity to obscure their influences leave the film and its studio feeling toothless in their opportunity to evade societal misconception, wasting away the kinds of carnage candy that could’ve captivated in chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OVERALL
Runner certainly is a formulaically flawed and generically unfunny action romp that certainly takes on speed bumps stalling its progressive significance, but ultimately remains cruising along with enticing action and pleasurable performances driving its buddy dynamic to its intended 92-minute destination. For Angel Studios, it’s a refreshing change of pace, both creatively and conceptually, but one that unfortunately comes at the regrets of a toothless bite humbled by post-production influence, leaving a stripped down, by-the-numbers vehicle that might get you where you need to go, but offers little flashy to the integrity of the ride<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My Grade: 6.4 or C<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Directed by Scott Waugh Starring – Alan Ritchson, Owen Wilson, Kate Box The Plot – A former soldier (Ritchson) and his unlikely partner (Wilson) become the targets of a ruthless cartel while racing to complete a critical medical delivery and save the life of a little girl. Rated PG-13 for strong violence, bloody images and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,4,21,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9906"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9908,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9906\/revisions\/9908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}