Review of Freerunner (2011) by Ellena S — 10 Sep 2013

Even for the modestly budgeted indie film that director Lawrence Silverstein's Freerunner is, it still managed to underwhelm me. In a clear attempt to capitalize the viral sensation that was parkour (to be clear, I'm not knocking it.

.. I used to and still do actionably parkour and train), this movie's plot, premise, and action are all centered around parkour, and apparently any conflict can be solved through some variation of parkour.

I've seen two other films recently that heavily featured parkour (District B13 and District 13: Ultimatum) that were significantly better than Freerunner. The reason for this is that they used parkour as a character attribute and during action sequences.

They had solid plots that, you guessed it, didn't center around parkour. The acting was just abysmal in this movie. The characters were wildly overacted, making it a pretty funny bad film (the only reason this movie received a full star).

Because of the realistic aspect parkour added to the movie, the ridiculously unrealistic story was emphasized resulting in one mess of a film. Those two elements did (I'm sure unintentionally) juxtapose each other nicely, which is what gave it it's comedic value.

Bottom line, I can't recommend this to anyone, it's not very good... But if you're with some good friends and want something to laugh at, you could do worse.