Truly Dreadful Film

Brilliant and touching

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

A pair of anti-war radicals on the run with their nuclear family, Annie and Arthur Pope (Lahti and Hirsch) are answerable for a napalm laboratory bombing in the 70s (with one casualty of injury), designated as an anti-Vietnam war protestation, and have been lying low with new identities every once in a while henceforth, until their eldest son Danny (Phoenix) reaches 17, a watershed is laying out, some big decision needs to contemplate by both parties. In Sidney Lumet's RUNNING ON EMPTY, River Phoenix starts his transition from child stardom to the perilous adult world, this is his only Oscar-nominated performance, although it is vexingly shunted to the supporting category as the default victim of the Academy's inherent bias towards tender-year performers or newcomers. Here, he is the bedrock of the movie, a piano prodigy in his making (hereditary from the mother side), but he cannot be forever cocooned in his family's unorthodox lifestyle, and the irony is pretty on the nose, this damning society is rife with all things against Annie and Arthur's counterculture tenets, yet in the context, there seems to be no better alternative at their disposal, making him a fugitive for something he hasn't perpetrated? That is just unfair, thus it is almost imperative that Danny must be released from the clutches albeit he is disposed to stick with the status quo in the end before bid farewell to his girlfriend Lorna (Plimpton, very good in her tomboyish, cool-girl complexion), whom he is besotted with. There is certainly a waft of elitism in the air, Danny is wanted by Juilliard, so how can any compos mentis parents thumb their noses at that proposition, which leaves them no choice but to cut their deeply bonded familial cord, it is very intriguing if there is a sequel to cover Danny's grown-up years, to see whether his parents' sacrifice is worthwhile. Apart from that, it is a thoroughly judicious melodrama and Lumet's low-key directorial gesture successfully elicits Phoenix's most touching persona as a youngster on the cusp of adulthood, whose caring nature is torn between the obligation to his family and a new world suddenly opens to him. The whole close-knit cast has done a cracking job, Judd Hirsch, although one can hardly condone that him and Phoenix are cutting from the same family tree from their physical appearances, pulls off an earnest father and an activist with ardor, whereas, Christine Lahti is viscerally sublime in her Janus-faced versatility: checking the scenes where Annie pseudo-cavalierly converses with Danny's teacher and later a lachrymose tête-à-tête with her own father for the first time in 15 years, that is the testimonial. Sensibly filleting the more sensitive political agenda (there are worms in their noble cause too) which is concomitant with the story-line, RUNNING ON EMPTY is in essence a well-meaning, good-natured encomium of family value and altruistic sacrifice, only its rushed finale (at least the logistics team could have packed some items in their departing truck considering they are fleeing from the place for keeps), hits like a fly in the ointment in a hearty 80s tale, incidentally, if the same story happens in a CCTV-rampant age like today, the family's fly-by-night endeavor will definitely not last such a protracted length to even face their offspring's growing pains.

In 1971 anti-war activists Annie (Christine Lahti) and Arthur (Judd Hirsch) Pope blow up a factory making napalm seriously hurting a janitor who wasn't supposed to be there. 17 years later they're on the run with two sons--17 year old Danny (River Phoenix) and 10 year old Harry (Jones Abry). At the place they're living Danny meets and falls in love with a wonderful girl (Martha Plimpton) and finds out he has enough talent to be accepted to Juilliard--but his father won't let him go.A quiet yet very moving movie. It doesn't judge its characters--it lets the audience make their own decisions. On one hand I felt sorry for all four of them--on the other I felt the parents should just turn themselves in and let the kids have a normal life. It's slow and a little drawn out but I was never bored. The acting was all superb--except for one person. Hirsch was TERRIBLE as the father. Very wooden and completely unbelievable. Plimpton was good as Phoenix's love interest and Lahti was excellent as his mother. Best of all was Phoenix. He was Oscar-nominated for this role and he's superb in every scene he's in. When he's on screen you can't stop watching him. Superb, quiet and very moving. Have plenty of tissues on hand:) For some reason the song "Running on Empty" is never heard--I'm assuming they couldn't afford the rights.

Running on Empty is a gem of film, with some great performances, especially the late River Phoenix.This is one of those films in the late 1980s that looked back on the recent past. Mississippi Burning is another film that springs to mind.The Pope family are fugitives.They have been on the run from the FBI since the early 1970s.Arthur(Judd Hirsch)and Annie (Christine Lahti) were once student radicals who blew up a lab that produced weapons, as a protest against the Vietnam War. Think Weathermen Underground and you get the picture.Their act of terror resulted in a fatality. We meet met them years later, when they are the parents to two boys. One of them, Danny played by River Phoenix, is now a teenager. He is tired of running, never having time to put down roots or make real friends. Danny also has to assume a new identity each time the family move. Whilst enrolled at his latest school, Danny, under the alias of Michael Manfield comes to the attention of a music teacher who notices what a gifted piano player he is. The teacher's daughter Lorna(Martha Plimpton) also notices Danny and begins to fall for him.The scenes between Danny and Lorna are well done. He slowly lowers his guard and starts to trust herThis film covers so much ground. Its about identity, love and how your past can both trap and mould you. Danny learnt to appreciate music through his mother, Annie who was from a wealthy middle class family. She knows how good he could be, but can she and Arthur let him go? Can he keep running forever without being able to live his life?There are two stand out scenes for me in this film. Annie meets her father for the first time in years. She clearly rejected everything he stood and yet there is so much emotion between them. The other scene is the pivotal one where the Popes make a decision about Danny. It is a clear indication that River Phoenix would have been huge had he lived.Just watch the look in his eyes as they bid farewell.To execute that range of emotions, you got to have acting chops. River definitely had it.The late Sidney Lumet shows what a skilled film maker he was, taking a difficult subject matter and getting great performances from the main players.

The most unsettling part of the family setting their dog out into the street and telling the children it'll certainly find another home is that the children take it rather well. They've deserted family dogs before. And they've left whole lives behind more times than that. The Popes are a married couple who've been subversive since the '60s, and their children include Danny, a high school senior and has never known any other kind of routine. The Popes were implicated in radical politics.They destroyed a building, and there was a janitor they didn't know would be there. They've been fugitives ever since, switching towns and names, finding jobs that don't draw attention, learning to keep the kids home on picture day. The more they flee yesteryear, the more it's in their mindset. And now time is catching up. What, for instance, is Danny going to do? He is a talented pianist, and through one of his teachers he gains a Juilliard scholarship. But he can't collect it unless he supplies his high school transcripts, which are strewn back along countless towns under countless different names.Judd Hirsch's Arthur Pope has taken an uncompromising position for decades, and he's not prepared to change now. He deems that the family must remain together, must safeguard itself against the world. He has created a stronghold psychology, and Danny shares it. He understands that if he confesses and enrolls at Juilliard, he'll never see his family again. His mother, Christine Lahti's Annie, will be heartbroken. She has been fleeing for ages without lamenting the forfeits she made, but she can't accept the idea that Danny will have to surrender his future, just as she lost hers.Life, for the time being, continues. Danny makes a girlfriend, whose father is conveniently the music teacher. They share secrets, but Danny can't share his biggest one. This is the first time he's had a girlfriend, the first time he's let anyone become this close, and he has to learn to confide without being truthful. Plimpton knows something's off, but not exactly what. The family has outlasted each close shave with the Feds, each question from a loud-mouthed neighbor. But this is an impossible risk, as it derives from within: It's no longer feasible for these people to elude questioning the very practicalities on which they've made their lives.And that questioning causes the movie's emotional pinnacle, when Lahti calls her father and coordinates to meet him for lunch. Long ago, she hurt him irrevocably. She vanished for years. Now she wants her parents to assume Danny, so he can go to music school. She will lose her son, as her father lost her. It's ironic and heartbreaking, and by the end of the scene we have been through a choker. The one scene that doesn't work is the cheesy and lugubrious ensemble dinner scene where everyone breaks out into song. But in either case, Lumet is showing us people who've chosen and are observing the cost, and throughout the film they'll have to reassess their assessments.Lumet was one of America's best directors, and his expertise here is in the way he takes a histrionic plot and makes it truthful by making it exclusive. All of the supporting characters are persuasive, mainly Plimpton and her father. And there are impressive performances in the principal roles. Phoenix largely bears the story. It's about him. Lahti and Hill have that devastating scene together. And Lahti and Hirsch, clustered together in bed, realizing in terror that they may have reached a turning point, are poignant. We see how they've relied on one another.The family is not actually political at all. Politics, interestingly, have been left far behind. That sort of commitment would reveal the Popes. The film is a tender, moving drama in which a choice must be made between staying together or splitting apart and perhaps realizing a long-deferred possibility. The parents never met whatever potential they had, owing to their fugitive life. Now, are they warranted in making their son forsake his own future?