Review of The Runner (1999) by Cheryl C — 10 Jan 2016

Review:

What a totally boring film! I was expecting something slightly interesting about this political drama but it just turned out to be another let down from Nicolas Cage. The pace of the film is slow and I personally lost interest, 5 minutes into the film. Cage plays politician, Colin Pryce, whose fighting for help from BP and the US government during the 2010 BP oil spill. Due to his womanising, he's forced to leave his political life behind and he seeks comfort from alcohol, which he previously had problems with. After splitting from his wife, he tries to help the families who are struggling to make a living in the fishing industry but no one takes him seriously because of his widely publicised personal life. He then gets the funding from a rich benefactor who wants him to go back into politics so he can help BP during the spillage crisis, so he's left with the decision to either help the people or to continue his political career against his own personal morals. And that's were the movie ends... Very uninteresting! Cage does show a little bit of emotion, during a speech about the problems that the BP spillage has caused the families but apart from that, the performances were extremely average. The storyline doesn't really go anywhere and the director didn't introduce any interesting characters to perk up the bland concept. Anyway, this movie definitely gets the thumbs down from me but on the plus side, my expectations wasn't that high because Cage hasn't made a decent film for ages. Disappointing!

Round-Up:

I'm starting to think that Nicolas Cage doesn't read his scripts before he stars in these low budget movies because they have all been pretty awful. At 52 years old, but looking much older, he still has time to regenerate his career to an Oscar standard but he has to stop starring in this mediocre movies, alongside C-Class actors. He does have another National Treasure in development but apart from that, he doesn't have any promising projects in the pipeline. It just seems like he's thrown in the towel at a time when Hollywood needs some decent actors. Anyway, this movie was directed by Austin Stark who has only directed 2 shorts in his whole career. You can tell that he hasn't had that much experience behind the camera because he missed out key elements in the storyline. For his first project, he was lucky to get Nicolas Cage on board but he didn't take full advantage of the opportunity.

Budget: $6million.

Worldwide Gross: N/A.

I recommend this movie to people who are into their dramatic movies starring Nicolas Cage, Sarah Paulson, Peter Fonda and Connie Nielsen. 2/10.