on the run movie review

You’ll be able to figure out where “Run” is headed pretty quickly, but that doesn’t detract from the precise thrills and campy fun along the way.

This is the follow-up from the guys who made 2018’s “ Searching ,” a taut, clever thriller starring John Cho as a frantic dad looking for his missing daughter, which took place (almost) entirely within the confines of laptop and cell phone screens. It was a gimmick, but a brilliantly executed one, and it offered Cho the opportunity to give a tour-de-force performance in a situation where there’s nowhere to hide.

With just their second feature, director Aneesh Chaganty and his co-writer, Sev Ohanian , expand the scenery but maintain the same tight narrative focus. And even as things get a little nutty by the end in a way that deviates from the quiet, slow burn that came before, the performances in what is essentially a two-hander always remain gripping. We’ve seen Sarah Paulson do this sort of simmering-beneath-the-surface insanity for years, but it’s always chilling to watch. Her technique is so specific, and she keeps you on edge with just the slightest facial expression or unexpected line delivery. But the great discovery of “Run” is Kiera Allen , making her feature film debut. As if performing opposite one of the greats working today weren’t daunting enough, “Run” asks a ton of Allen in a physically and emotionally arduous role, and she’s up for every challenge. She’s a real find and a joy to watch.

“Run” begins, though, in a quietly harrowing way. With echoes of the Ryan Murphy series “Ratched,” we see Paulson’s Diane Sherman at a hospital where everything is bathed in a sickly green light. She’s just given birth to a tiny baby who arrived prematurely, and a title card lists a variety of illnesses including arrhythmia, asthma and diabetes. Seventeen years later, we see Diane living an extremely organized but seemingly happy life with her daughter, Chloe (Allen), who runs through her daily routine from her wheelchair. (Casting a disabled actress for this part also makes Allen an excellent choice.) This includes medications and physical therapy but also hours of homeschool, which Diane administers. Mom also cooks healthy meals with the vegetables she grows in her own garden. Everything is carefully controlled. Chloe is clearly an intelligent young woman, as evidenced by the many complex engineering projects she works on in her bedroom, and she would seem to have a bright future ahead of her.

Yeah, that’s the thing. Chloe has dreams of leaving home and her isolated town—and her mom—to study at the University of Washington, four hours away. It’s not that they have a dysfunctional relationship. It’s just that it’s only been the two of them in that remote house for so long, and since Chloe hasn’t been allowed an iPhone or internet access all these years—which is more than a tad suspicious—she’s understandably yearning to explore the outside world. The way Diane insists a little too defensively that she’s totally fine with this possibility during a support group meeting suggests that perhaps she’s … not.

So much of what makes the clockwork of “Run” tick comes from the tiny details and the editing, the work of Nick Johnson and Will Merrick . Following their usual schedule and noticing slight tweaks along the way gives us the creeping sense that there’s a disturbing shift underfoot. Part of the fun of “Run” is that, as in “Searching,” we’re solving the mystery of what’s truly happening right alongside the main character. A prime example of this approach occurs at the pharmacy when Diane and Chloe head into town to see a movie (and the title on the marquee is good for a chuckle). We’re putting the pieces together at the same time Chloe is, and we can feel her panic as the tension steadily escalates. Later, in one of the film’s more physically demanding scenes, Chloe must MacGyver her way out of a tricky situation, but the fact that Chaganty and Ohanian have laid the groundwork for her smarts and resourcefulness makes it a blast to watch, and not at all ridiculous. So many of Allen’s scenes require her to act alone and pull us along wordlessly, which would be difficult even for a seasoned actor, but there’s a wisdom and a confident stillness about her that’s compelling and grounding.

And that’s crucial, because “Run” gets a little wild as it barrels toward its conclusion—less Hitchcock, more “ Misery .” But there are some unexpected twists and turns within the big reveal as to what’s actually going on here. And during these bizarre times when we’re all stuck at home ourselves, “Run” may just be the escape we needed all along.

Now playing on Hulu. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Kiera Allen as Chloe Sherman
• Sarah Paulson as Diane Sherman
• Pat Healy as Tom
• Aneesh Chaganty
• Sev Ohanian

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• Hillary Spera
• Torin Borrowdale

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Action & Adventure

Two teen sisters learn about their family's involvement with a secret program and go on the run to escape the deadly criminals targeting their family. On the Run featuring Sofia Masson and Taylor Geare is free on Tubi. It's an action & adventure and crime movie with a better than average IMDb audience rating of 7.5 (41 votes).

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Streaming availability last updated: 03:03:05 AM, 08/26/2024 PST

More Information onOn the Run

Sofia masson, taylor geare, rasandra daniels, becky wangberg, sarah eisenberg.

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‘Run’ Review: Bad Medicine

Sarah Paulson plays a menacing parent in this enjoyably ludicrous thriller.

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‘Run’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The director aneesh chaganty narrates an escape sequence from his film, featuring kiera allen..

Hi, I’m Aneesh Chaganty, and I’m the co-writer and director of Run. O.K. So the scene that’s playing out right now takes place in the second act of the movie. Without giving much away, the basic setup is this. So our daughter, played by newcomer Kiera Allen, has been locked in her room by her misaligned mother, played by veteran Sarah Paulson, and is convinced that she needs to escape. From a form standpoint, I think what you’re about to watch is actually one of the few sequences that breaks the pattern of the film’s aesthetic. Much of the film’s style is sort of borrowed from the films of Hitchcock and Shyamalan, and those films don’t just choose shots because one thing can happen in them. They designed frames where, like, four or five things can happen in them. So to borrow a page out of their book, I storyboarded every single frame of this movie by hand before we started shooting. You can actually compare the boards to the final film. It’s all pretty identical. So right now, we’re watching Chloe, who’s this super resourceful and smart and inventive girl, sort of MacGyver a solution out of her room. Chloe uses a wheelchair, so a solution that an able-bodied person might have come up with won’t work for her. She has to overcome that with just sort of pure intelligence, and she does. Every single shot inside this room here is repeated from an earlier shot in the movie. I wanted to be super spare with the visuals of this movie and always design frames that could be repeated so that when things start to explode narratively, like right now, it would feel like real catharsis. [MUSIC PLAYING] So all of this was shot on a stage in Winnipeg. We basically created the entire second story of his house on a stage, and the first story and the outside— what you’re looking at now— is all on-location. So now we’re kind of jumping into the single most complex shooting process of the entire film, where this whole sequence is about to stitch so many different skill sets and elements and shooting days into one. So she just kind of comes out onto her roof. We’re landing on a shot of Kiera in a stage on a set where the roof is actually flat and the walls are tilted to the side. It looks sort of like a really cool— it’s hard to describe, but just movie magic makes that work. So the camera’s just tilted. She’s actually perfectly flat on the ground. We’re just tilting her hair a little bit and occasionally blowing wind to the side. And that’s her face pushing forward a little bit, and sort of a blue screen behind her. The next shot you’re going to see is going to be from the side, and that is a stunt double. But it looks like Kiera because we face-replaced Kiera’s face onto it. And this shot sort of was actually the first shot that we did on day one of shooting. And we had to shoot it on day one, because we shot in Winnipeg, Canada, which is, like, the coldest place ever, and we had to shoot out our exteriors first before everything started snowing. We started shooting October 31st of 2018. By the way, the house was chosen because it just felt like when we saw it that it looked like it was, like— you could put it on a movie poster and draw it out and put Sarah Paulson’s face above it, and it just had the vibes of this old-school, Hitchcock house, so there’s just like secrets inside of it and stuff. This is a shot on set, again, on this little fake, made roof. This is another shot on set. Obviously, we did not put Kiera on an actual roof with danger. But this whole sequence, we shot over multiple, multiple days. And she still has a bunch of water in her mouth that she swallowed from earlier. She plugs in a soldering iron, heats up the soldering iron, and puts the soldering iron to this glass in the cold, where it immediately starts to kind of crack because the heat is expanding it, and then immediately will spit out some water onto the glass, where it shatters the rest of it. This is actually a technique. One of my best friend’s dads is a glass blower, and taught me this over the phone. So that’s the end of one of the biggest set pieces of the movie, which honestly tries to do what we were trying to do with this whole movie, which is take a normal house and turn every single element of that house into a massive Burj Khalifa-scale obstacle.

By Jeannette Catsoulis

If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother. Balancing on the backs of umpteen matriarch-from-hell movies, the director Aneesh Chaganty brings us “Run,” a nifty little thriller whose title pleads for an exclamation point.

And not just because of its hyperventilating style. Sarah Paulson’s performance in the role of Diane — a single mother so controlling she’s more prison warden than parent — flickers with camp. That tone is on display when Diane insinuates to fellow home-schoolers that, for the past 17 years, her sickly daughter, Chloe (Kiera Allen), has made her life a misery of servitude. And it fully blooms in the movie’s dementedly operatic final scenes, when the scales have slipped from Chloe’s eyes and Diane is revealed in all her deranged glory.

Before then, the movie hints at a mildly sinister hostage drama as Chloe, smart and (like Allen herself) in a wheelchair, waits for her college acceptance letter and navigates multiple chronic health conditions. Surprisingly cheerful for someone with neither friends nor phone nor unmonitored internet access, Chloe maintains a comfortable codependency with Diane, who provides pills and plausible reasons for denying her daughter further freedoms. Until a troubling discovery kicks Chloe into an unexpectedly suspenseful battle for more than just the right to online privacy.

This will involve stunts both elaborate and hazardous, and Allen, in her first feature role, is convincingly up for all of them. Despite a script (by Chaganty and Sev Ohanian) that sees no need to flavor its tension with flashbacks or character-fleshing, “Run” has fun with its ludicrous plot. As when Chloe persuades Diane to take her to a movie and we glimpse its title on the marquee: “Breakout.”

Run Rated PG-13 for a nasty rash, a toxic beverage and a very unlucky mailman. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Hulu .

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Common Sense Media Review

Dark domestic thriller has violence, mature themes.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Run is a thriller about an abusive mother who has been making her child sick and the attempts of the teen trying to escape. The film is dark, suspenseful, and has moments of emotional and physical terror and violence. Diane, a child abuser with Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another,…

Why Age 13+?

Teen trapped in a house, locked in rooms. Chase scenes, fleeing, moments of peri

"Goddamn" and an implied not fully said "motherf----r."

A mother drinks wine occasionally. Scenes of homemade drug concoctions meant to

Some talk of dating.

Any Positive Content?

Lead character Chloe is strong, resilient, brave, curious, and intelligent. She

Courage and perseverance can literally save your life. Those who commit harm, cr

Violence & Scariness

Teen trapped in a house, locked in rooms. Chase scenes, fleeing, moments of peril and terror. Guns, woman shot in shoulder, some blood. Two forced syringe and needle druggings. An implied murder by pills. Dead mailman dragged across floor leaves blood trail. Premature baby struggles to breathe in incubator and later a mother sobs while holding her. Some scenes with emotional torment.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A mother drinks wine occasionally. Scenes of homemade drug concoctions meant to incapacitate and/or kill. Syringes, pills, and talk of medications.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Role Models

Lead character Chloe is strong, resilient, brave, curious, and intelligent. She works on fixing her electronic 3d printer and other devices. She also overcomes many dire and terrifying situations with grit, ingenuity, and hope. She does kill in the end, however.

Positive Messages

Courage and perseverance can literally save your life. Those who commit harm, crimes, and abuse will be caught and punished.

Parents need to know that Run is a thriller about an abusive mother who has been making her child sick and the attempts of the teen trying to escape. The film is dark, suspenseful, and has moments of emotional and physical terror and violence. Diane, a child abuser with Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another, formerly Munchausen syndrome by proxy, hides a tragic past. She entraps, forcefully drugs, and threatens to kill her daughter Chloe. With a syringe and needle Diane knocks out a mailman and later kills him, dragging his body across the hallway floor, which leaves a trail of blood. Chloe tries to escape Diane and various dire situations. Chloe gets locked in bedrooms, chained to a wall, chased a lot, hurt when tumbling down stairs, forcefully drugged multiple times, threatened, and kidnapped; all these scenes can be scary. Diane sometimes suddenly appears in the background or in the dark. Adults drink wine. Language includes "goddamn" and an implied "motherf----r." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (3)
• Kids say (30)

Based on 3 parent reviews

What's the Story?

In RUN, 17-year-old Chloe (Kiera Allen) lives a solitary life except for her mother Diane ( Sarah Paulson ), who tends to her daughter's every medical need and has done so for her entire life. Chloe supposedly suffers from arrhythmia, hemochromatosis, asthma, diabetes, and paralysis of her legs, the latter of which has required her to be in a wheelchair for as long as she can remember. The only problem is that Chloe starts to realize some oddities about the care her mother provides. Chloe's extremely limited freedoms are odd, the way her mother always gets to the mail before Chloe is odd, the way the Wi-Fi doesn't work when her mother isn't home is odd. Some of the medicine her mother gives her isn't what it seems. If Chloe had to escape her mother, how exactly could she manage that? What lengths would her mother go to stop her?

Is It Any Good?

Not a deep look into the behavioral and mental health complexities and nuances of Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another, this thriller only wants to thrill, and it just about does. In terms of quality, pace, writing, acting, and thrills, Run is on par with and sometimes exceeds director Aneesh Chaganty's first feature, the chillingly disturbing Searching . For Run , Chaganty structures his focus on child abuse and parental derangement in three acts: family horror, hostage drama, escape thriller. By the time the pace ramps up entering the finale, lead character Chloe has more than earned her freedom. Run is a platform for two great performances, one a terribly menacing desperate mother from Sarah Paulson and the other a courageous first-time lead achievement for Kiera Allen, who is also a wheelchair user in real life.

In some other ways, by the time the epilogue rolls, some viewers may find some logical gaps and inconsistencies, even if parsing them out would have only likely bogged things down. There's a distinct lack of any scenes of Chloe's childhood or growing up alone with no friends, television, public life outside visiting the pharmacy, or grander curiosity about the outside world. Somehow, Chloe made it all the way to 17 before really questioning or seeing the horrible things her mother was doing. Lastly, the film's ending may leave some viewers disappointed.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how Run portrays Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (Munchausen syndrome by proxy). How is it different from other films or tv shows that also feature this form of child and sometimes elder abuse?

Sadly, many people lose a child, but what was different about Diane's loss that made her turn to kidnapping, abuse, and murder?

Was the portrayal of Chloe a strong one? If you were in her situation, would you have done anything differently? If so, what?

Do you think Chloe's last act at the end was necessary? How would the film have looked if she had done something else?

Why do you think people are interested in tragic stories based on real life? Does Run glamorize any part of the abusive caregiver? Does it glamorize any part of the person under their care? Explain.

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : November 20, 2020
• Cast : Sarah Paulson , Kiera Allen , Pat Healy , Sara Sohn
• Director : Aneesh Chaganty
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Hulu
• Genre : Thriller
• Character Strengths : Courage , Perseverance
• Run time : 90 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : Disturbing thematic content, some violence/terror, and language.
• Last updated : March 12, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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‘run’: film review.

'Run,' Aneesh Chaganty's follow-up to 'Searching,' watches as a teen (Kiera Allen) tries to escape the clutches of her desperately possessive mother (Sarah Paulson).

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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A delicious Hitchcockian thriller about the perils of maternal codependency, Aneesh Chaganty’s sophomore feature Run proves wrong anyone who might’ve suspected the attention given to his 2018 Sundance darling Searching was due to its screens-centric formal gimmick. (The film, which opened the online Nightstream festival Thursday, will debut on Hulu November 20th.)

Release date: Nov 20, 2020

Paulson plays Diane, who has spent the last seventeen years as sole caregiver for a child with an assortment of special needs: Chloe (Allen) is paralyzed from the waist down, diabetic and asthmatic, has serious heart and skin issues — everything but a nut allergy, it seems. Yet she’s a remarkable girl: bright, resourceful, and eager to start life on her own just as soon as the University of Washington sends her an acceptance letter.

Opening scenes displaying the friendly ease of the pair’s home-school routine — handfuls of pills throughout the day, a rigorous lesson plan, a surprising lack of teen resentment — also casually inform us that this kid, unlike nearly all others, has no always-on connections to the outside world. No phone, and seemingly no computer in her room, though one wonders how she uses the 3D printer she’s repairing without one. The point is, it would not be easy to do detective work if she were to suddenly worry Mom might be up to something shady.

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Hulu's sarah paulson thriller 'run' to open virtual nightstream fest.

Well, she is. At least one of the pills she’s giving Chloe wasn’t prescribed for the girl. The first couple of scenes after Chloe’s suspicions arise observe how quickly the two women improvise, each pulling plausible lies out of the air with a smile when the other asks a dangerous question. Neither buys the responses, but neither will admit it. Chloe finds clever ways to seek answers about the prescription, and the script neatly thwarts them — until a nail-biting sequence in which she learns what’s being done to her. Diane catches her mid-discovery, and the film enters full-on Misery mode, with the wheelchair-bound girl held prisoner in her own bedroom.

What do you do when you can’t walk, your bedroom door is barred and you’re on the second floor? Chaganty stages an answer that blends MacGyver-like ingenuity, ticking-clock tension and palpable physical peril. Once the scene is done, you might suspect there was an easier solution. Try not to let that ruin the thrill.

While Chaganty’s go-to composer Torin Borrowdale supplies a classic-feeling orchestral backdrop, the film keeps us guessing without seeming too thirsty to impress us with twists. The couple of big ones in store make the most of the plot’s metaphors about the dark side of procreation and a child’s existential need to create her own identity.

Having given us a rescue-minded dad in Searching and a daughter who must do her own rescuing here, perhaps Chaganty will next build a thriller around that most familiar archetype, the mother who’ll surmount any obstacle to protect her child. If so, don’t count on it going quite the way you expect.

Venue: Nightstream Film Festival Production company: Lionsgate Distributor: Hulu Cast: Sarah Paulson, Kiera Allen, Pat Healy, Sara Sohn Director: Aneesh Chaganty Screenwriters: Aneesh Chaganty, Sev Ohanian Producers: Sev Ohanian, Natalie Qasabian Director of photography: Hillary Spera Production designer: Jean-Andre Carriere Costume designer: Heather Neale Editors: Nick Johnson, Will Merrick Composer: Torin Borrowdale Casting director: Rich Delia

PG-13, 89 minutes

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Sarah Paulson

Aneesh Chaganty

Natalie Qasabian

Sev Ohanian

Dark domestic thriller has violence, mature themes.

• Average 7.1
• Reviews 140

Sarah Paulson is a mom unhinged in Hulu's high-camp thriller Run: Review

Has depravity ever had a sweeter face than Sarah Paulson 's? In the gleefully hammy hothouse thriller Run (on Hulu Nov. 20) the Ratched star turns up as another kind of cuckoo caretaker with a client base of one: her disabled teenage daughter, Chloe (bright newcomer Kiera Allen, who also uses a wheelchair).

A preemie who barely survived her birth — her long list of maladies, from paralysis and diabetes to asthma and arrhythmia, reads like a med-school case study — Chloe has somehow still become a happy, well-adjusted kid. Now a home-schooled high school senior, she and Paulson's Diane have settled into their cozy routines: daily lessons in physics or American lit, chatty meals around the kitchen table, maybe a movie in town.

So what if Diane sometimes likes to go down in the basement with a glass of wine and watch old home movies with a stricken, inscrutable smile on her face? And that she keeps the only source of internet in the house — an ancient desktop that looks like it's still learning to process Windows 98 — locked down at night? Or that Chloe, as eager as any 17-year-old to get out into the world, can't ever seem to find responses to the colleges she's applied to when the mailman comes?

An odd incident with a new medication — there's something off about the label, and the source of it — leads her daughter to suspect, for the first time, that all might not be right with dear Diane. From there, director Aneesh Chaganty (who made his debut with 2018's clever digital whodunit Searching ) plunges headlong into a familiar catalog of dangled clues, near misses, and wildly convenient coincidences.

Like another recent thriller it recalls, last year's Octavia Spencer vehicle Ma , his script (co-penned with Sev Ohanian) hints intriguingly at a deeper backstory for its protagonist — the kind of circumstances that might lead a lonely, unhappy woman to weaponize her own fears and insecurities.

Instead, the movie mostly sticks to a timeworn template, letting its two stars carry what the scantly drawn story can't. (Though it's Allen's film debut, she has a natural ease that cuts against Paulson's higher drama; it's a pleasure to watch someone on screen who feels like an actual teenager and not some glossy, angsty avatar engineered in a lab by the CW.) If the plot tends to outline its intentions in Sharpie — and veer into pure silliness by the final third — their presence pulls all that ridiculosity over the finish line: hardly a home run, but still a brittle, nasty bit of fun. Grade: B-

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On the Run Reviews

• 1 hr 36 mins
• Watchlist Where to Watch

In this actioner, a tough young woman and her ex-con lover leave a trail of destruction across the South while trying to escape the law.

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Sarah Paulson’s a Terror in Tasteful Mom Garb in the Hulu Thriller Run

Sarah Paulson has the oval face of a marble Madonna and the fragile affect of someone whose outward show of serenity could at any moment collapse into teary hysteria or explode into rage. In a lot of her roles, she wears femininity as though it were a mask that’s always in danger of slipping and exposing more unruly, indelicate realities underneath. There’s a knowing quality to this approach, a self-awareness that lends itself well to camp, which is one of the reasons Paulson has been such a central presence in the Ryan Murphy Televisual Universe. In September, she starred in Ratched , the most recent byproduct of Murphy’s deal with Netflix, and a show with a premise better suited to a comedy sketch about the creatively bankrupt state of the prestige drama than a two-season order. But while giving an origin story to Nurse Ratched, the psych-ward tyrant in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest , was both unasked for and an odd misunderstanding of the source material, the role, at least, fit Paulson like a latex medical glove. It was another opportunity to show how adept she is with characters who weaponize buttoned-down white womanhood and the expectations of propriety that accompany it — in this case, doling out violence with a smirk and an insistence that it’s for the recipient’s own good.

She’s adept enough, actually, to play the part of the malevolent angel of mercy twice in one year. In Run , the new film from Searching director Aneesh Chaganty , Paulson has again been cast as a caregiver whose displays of self-sacrificing assistance conceal some truly alarming shit. She’s Diane Sherman, a single mother whose life revolves around her daughter Chloe (newcomer Kiera Allen), a teen living with a slew of health issues — among them asthma, diabetes, partial paralysis — that are implied to be linked to a premature birth. The film walks us through Chloe’s morning routine of creams, pills, inhalers, blood-sugar-level tests, and leg stretches before showing her spending her days homeschooling and waiting for the mail, anxious for acceptance letters from colleges. It’s an isolated life, but the script, which Chaganty wrote with Sev Ohanian, is careful in laying out why Chloe doesn’t see it that way. Diane is the one who drives them into town, doesn’t let Chloe have a cell phone, and keeps the internet-enabled computer in the living room. But she’s doting, and if the comfortable two-story home in which the pair live is actually prison, it’s one whose bars Chloe has yet to bump up against.

And then Chloe discovers that the prescription bottle for one of her regular medications is not actually in her name, a small disruption that leads to the upending of her entire universe. It doesn’t take long for Run to swerve into being a thriller, one in which Chloe’s forced to question everything she’s taken for granted, including whether she’s really as sick as she’s been told and whether Diane has her best interests at heart. The film’s set pieces are scaled to its heroine’s minimal world and have varying degrees of success creating suspense from sequences of sneaking time on the landline and trying to escape a locked bedroom by crawling across the roof. In a rare, welcome bit of casting, Allen is, like the character she’s playing, a wheelchair-user, and the film is unfussy in its portrayal of Chloe’s disabilities and blessedly free from the ickiness that can come from watching an actor approach a disability like something that just makes a role riper. Allen acquits herself solidly, though it would have been nice if Chloe had been given traits beyond “plucky determination” and “liking STEM.” Run isn’t always a clever film, but it is a film in which the characters are clever, and it seems determined to avoid the kind of moments that leave you yelling at the screen in frustration about how terrible someone’s choices are. If it ultimately falls a bit flat, it might be because it’s all a little too sensible.

But then along comes Paulson, with a performance that goes from a barely perceptible simmer to an overflowing boil. Her Diane is a woman who speaks soothingly at support groups and puts a lot of time into her garden and who’s on fire on the inside the whole time about the prospect of not having someone totally dependent on her. The character’s ready with all sorts of reasonable explanations for Chloe’s growing questions, and when those fail, she wraps martyrdom around herself like chain mail, apologizing to the local pharmacist about how Chloe’s new medication has her acting out and tearily urging a would-be savior to “believe a mother when she tells you that her child is sick.” What’s frightening about Diane are not the lengths to which she goes, but how sincerely felt her deeply warped expression of love is — to the point where its recipient doesn’t actually matter, because the act of care is all that counts. Whenever Paulson is on screen, she gives Run a much-needed jolt of vitality as this Munchausen’s-by-proxy monster in catalog knitwear. Her character’s devotion is as terrible as it is unshakeable, but what makes the turn so enjoyable is that it’s grounded in something recognizable — a soul-deep dread of being abandoned, hidden under a nurturer’s smile.

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The 10 best movies about characters on the run, according to reddit.

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The Crow Review: If There's A World Where This Remake Could Have Been Good, We Don't Live In It

How mike flanagan's next stephen king adaptation will be different from his past movies, it's losers club actors reunite 5 years after stephen king adaptation (minus 3 members).

The Gray Man might not have been the most well-received action movie of the year, but it must have done big numbers for Netflix, as The Gray Man 2 is officially confirmed with Ryan Gosling returning. The movie saw the titular agent on the run and it led to some huge action sequences, such as the shootout in Prague, and a sequel has the potential to be way better.

Redditors have debated which movies about characters on the run are the best, and it's a mix of predictable all-timers, deep cuts, and cult classics. Whether it's a continuation of a beloved TV series, based on an SNL sketch, or set entirely in one room, these are must-watches for fans of on-the-run movies.

El Camino (2019)

0nno1 points to El Camino as one of the best on-the-run movies. The film is a continuation of the crime drama series Breaking Bad , and it picks up right where the show left off. Jesse escapes the neo-Nazi compound and attempts to change his identity and get out of town before he's caught by Alburquerque's finest.

El Camino ends the exact same way that Jesse's story in Breaking Bad ends, as his final shots in both of them are of him driving away, escaping his former life. While that realization might make the whole Netflix movie pointless, Jesse's journey in the film and the way it continues to build the Alburquerque underworld make for some great storytelling. And at this point, Breaking Bad fans expect nothing less.

Heat (1995)

Garrisontweed thinks Heat is the best movie about criminals on the run. The epic action heist movie follows a group of professional criminals who rob banks and armored vehicles for a living. And though the three-hour movie isn't totally about being on the run, the final hour is, and it's one of the most anxiety-inducing hours of film ever.

After the group botches the final bank heist and a shootout erupts on the street, the last hour sees each criminal going their own way and having their approach to evading the cops. And with Heat 2 having just been released as a novel , and as much of it follows Chris after having gotten out of dodge, a possible movie adaptation could be an even more thrilling on-the-run movie.

Ambulance (2022)

Petrichorsnowstorm thinks the newly released Ambulance deserves to be in the conversation when it comes to the very best on-the-run movies. The Redditor notes, " Ambulance is two straight hours of running and hiding from cops, it's a v. good time."

The movie follows two brothers who hijack an ambulance after a bank robbery goes wrong, and almost the whole movie takes place on the streets as they're being chased down by L.A. cops, the FBI, and even the cartel. Director Michael Bay gets a lot of backlash for most of his movies, and though Ambulance still isn't perfect, it's a return to form for the filmmaker, as it's a straightforward and thrilling action movie like The Rock and Bad Boys .

The Fugitive (1993)

The Fugitive , mentioned by Melcolnik , might be the most obvious example of a great on-the-run movie, as it's one of the best cat-and-mouse chase movies ever made. The Redditor comments, "Not to be too on the nose, but The Fugitive is great." The movie follows Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) who has been framed for the murder of his wife and is being hunted by Detective Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones).

The 1993 release sees two Hollywood heavyweights chewing the scenery, and the few times they're on screen together is almost as exciting as the diner scene in Heat . It's one of the few film adaptations of a TV show that has managed to become more popular than the series. However, the sequel, U.S. Marshals , unfortunately, isn't as popular as its predecessor, and many don't even know it exists.

Enemy Of The State (1998)

313Wolverine believes Enemy of the State is the best on-the-run movie, and it's certainly one of the most creative. The movie follows Robert Clayton Dean, who is framed for murder, and he seeks the help of Edward Lyle (Gene Hackman), an ex-intelligence agent and surveillance expert who will help Robert clear his name.

The movie is made even better when taking into account the fan theory that it's a sequel to The Conversation . The 1974 movie follows Harry Caul, who is also played by Gene Hackman, and since the character is a surveillance expert just like Edward in the 1998 release, it makes for a great double bill.

The Blues Brothers (1980)

Devinstater thinks The Blues Brothers is easily the best on-the-run movie. The Redditor explains, "Action comedy musical that is probably the most 'fun' version of this type of movie." The film combines so many different genres and is so accomplished in every single one of them that it's hard to believe that the film originated from a Saturday Night Live sketch .

Not only were the Blues Brothers on "a mission from gahd," but they were totally on the run too. The brothers might be trying to raise money to save an orphanage, but they're being pursued by the police, and they even cause a multi-car pile-up. Whether it's on-stage jazz performances, incredibly shot car chases, or the surprisingly heartfelt narrative, the movie is so much more than an SNL comedy.

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Vidzphile thinks Quentin Tarantino's directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs , should be in the conversation when it comes to the best on-the-run movie. While Reservoir Dogs' title might be confusing , the 1992 film follows a group of thieves on the run from the police after a jewel heist goes terribly wrong.

Though the thieves are on the run, it's more like they are waiting it out, as most of the movie takes place in their warehouse hideout. They retreat there after the botched jewel heist, and while they think they are safe there, they are more like sitting ducks, and only one manages to escape. However, he might have suffered a fate much worse after the film ends, as some theorize that Mr. Pink is the Buddy Holly waiter in Pulp Fiction .

Public Enemies (2009)

Director Michael Mann loves movies about characters on the run more than any other filmmaker. Along with Heat , he directed Public Enemies , only the 2009 movie is based on a true story. DrRexMorman thinks the historical biopic, which is about Melvin Purvis' (Christian Bale) attempt to bring down John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), is the best movie about a criminal on the run.

Just as Heat saw two Hollywood heavyweights face off against each other, Public Enemies features two powerful performances from Bale and Depp, especially when they share the screen. Between Heat and Public Enemies , Mann should be approached by every studio wanting to make a testosterone-fuelled cat-and-mouse movie, and the recently released The Gray Man would undoubtedly have been incredible under his direction.

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

That_melody thinks Catch Me If You Can is the best movie about a criminal on the run, as it follows teenager Frank Abagnale Jr. who runs away from home and gets by on cashing fraudulent checks. As Frank quickly catches the attention of the FBI, the movie goes from a period drama to a high-stakes globe-trotting action comedy.

Catch Me If You Can undoubtedly glamorizes the life of a criminal, as it sees Frank enjoying being on the run by jet-setting around the world, living in exotic locations, and spending his fraudulently acquired checks on Aston Martins. But that's exactly what elevates the 2002 movie from a simple film about a teenager on the run to a magnificent crime caper.

Thelma & Louise (1991)

HeartsPlayer721 reckons that the Ridley Scott-directed Thelma & Louise is the best on-the-run movie. While most movies about criminals on the run are exciting, action-packed, and fun, Thelma & Louise is a lot more serious. The titular characters are a victim of circumstance, as they become wanted after an action of self-defense results in murder.

What began as a quiet fishing trip for the two characters ends with Thelma and Louise having no other choice but to drive off a cliff. Though the crime drama isn't exactly entertaining or endlessly rewatchable, the tearjerking on-the-run movie is absolutely a must-watch.

NEXT: 10 Movies Where The Title Character Dies

Best Man On The Run Films, Ranked

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Whether it be a fugitive looking to clear their name or someone trekking the world while agents of chaos follow, a person on the run always exhilarates and enthralls. There are staples and godfathers of the genre. Like Alfred Hitchcock , who proactively found ways to create thrilling versions of a similar story: A man accused of murder who must fight to clear his name while on the run from those who think they're guilty. North By Northwest , Saboteur , and The 39 Steps to name a few — the master of suspense created new ways to thrill his audience.

Conversely, movie stars like Harrison Ford found success playing a man who must clear his name from his wife’s murder ( The Fugitive , Presumed Innocent , and Frantic ). These kinds of films beckon their protagonists to quest for life while death or imprisonment always linger around the corner. When done right, the "man on the run" genre makes for one of the best kinds of films produced.

10 Good Time

The Safdie Brothers have their own energy as a new directorial duo creating a specific kind of hyperbolic, psychedelic, and anxiety-tinged thriller that moves at the rhythmic sensation of an EDM concert. With Good Time , their fierce independent work caught the eye of Robert Pattinson , who plays a very particular brand of New York scumbag as he weaves his way in and out of trouble on one long crime-ridden night. After his brother gets arrested during a dim-witted heist attempt, he embarks on breaking him out as the pulse of the night never stops. As Pattinson’s character “Connie Nikas” has run-ins with New Yorkers familiar to anyone aquatinted with the five boroughs, Connie's manic-desperation fills the frames with resonance. Good Time goes on the run and stays there.

Related: Robert Pattinson's Best Indie Movies, Ranked

9 The Bourne Identity

One of the great action trilogies of the early part of the Century, The Bourne Identity kicked off the amnesiac CIA assassin on the perpetual run, trying to clear his name. Matt Damon stars as the titular character, forcing himself to reconcile what his government trained him to do and their failed silencing of him, which only made him more dangerous. With a sleazy and sinister Brian Cox as his handler, the shadowy evil of the American government persists throughout the movie. Doug Liman helmed what would kick off a new style of action filmmaking that would permeate American blockbusters for time to come, with quick-cut, breakneck close combat , The Bourne Identity soared.

8 Nightfall

One of the great tropes of man-on-the-run movies is a character accused of a crime he didn't commit. Jacques Tourneur's economical Nightfall tells the familiar tale in a brisk but gritty 71 minutes. Starring Aldo Ray as the man accused and Anne Bancroft as the femme fatale. The film has similar stylings to noir, with its moody photography and the reliable bag of money stashed away. Ray steals the show as the accused drunkard. His naturalistic acting gives him a unique presence against the classic melodramatic posturing of the supporting cast who don't seem up to speed with where Ray was taking his art. There’s also an incredible snow shootout, as the two crooks confuse Ray as their guy and take him on the run.

7 Enemy of the State

An insanely stacked roster of actors that starts with an uncredited cameo from Jason Robards. Robards plays a Congressman assassinated by a shadow part of the government led by Jon Voight. The cast only grows from there as it stars Will Smith, unwillingly caught in the middle of the conspiracy as he goes on the run and gets help from Gene Hackman, showing him the ropes when it comes to the surveillance state. Enemy of the State was Tony Scott’s acknowledgment of where the United States was going. He leaned into the viscera of our government's new technologies and how they were capable of breaking any privacy law in the name of their “interests.” Scott went full tilt and delivered an incredible, rousing conspiracy thriller while blending his signature gonzo style of filmmaking. Keeping the audience involved with every piece of equipment, flying at 100 miles per hour.

6 First Blood

Another one of the great scripts that Sylvester Stallone penned for himself to star in that would later turn into a franchise, First Blood is a hard-nosed crime-thriller pitting former Green Beret John Rambo against the abusive police state. The story set-up echoes the unfortunate sentiments of the Vietnam War. As a country forgets the souls of the men they turn into killing machines when they come home. Violently tempered and misunderstood, the abuses of the state don't recognize their hypocrisy. Rambo thus enters a new war — the war at home — as he fends for his life against a country that tries to kill him.

Related: Best Sylvester Stallone Movies, Ranked

5 Thelma & Louise

A groundbreaking and instantly iconic film when it was released, Thelma & Louise takes a spin at re-purposing the Western ethos as a progressive take on bandits on the run set against the sparse backdrop of the southwest desert. Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon shine in Ridley Scott's sleek direction as they empower and liberate themselves from the grips of possessive men while also realizing their love for one another is all they need. Which then manifests into one of the great endings of all time .

4 Minority Report

Steven Spielberg’s dark turn in the late-90s and early-2000s produced some of his most spellbinding and harrowing work. Minority Report is in the classic vein of Tom Curise vehicles where he's forced to run. Adapted from the mind of Phillip K. Dick , Spielberg can delve deeper into our civilization's technological advancements and the dangers they can pose when in the hands of people who misuse them. While also fitting in the classic daddy issues that can page his movies, Spielberg creates a vision for the world that is stupefying and grim but also gorgeous. As Cruise leads a police unit that can see murders before they happen, he must set out to prove his innocence when a murder he may commit becomes the subject of investigation. An ingenius set-up that fits Cruise’s persona perfectly.

3 Odd Man Out

Carol Reed set the blueprint for his other masterpiece, The Third Man , with his first man on the run in an unfamiliar city with Odd Man Out . Starring James Mason as “Johnny McQueen” whose recent return from prison puts himself at odds with the political violence of his crew “The Organization” (an obvious fill-in for the IRA) in a nameless Belfast as he argues against the use of violence for their cause. After a robbery with his crew goes wrong, Mcqueen is left for dead in the streets and must fend for himself for a safe passage home. Reed masterfully toes the line between life and death, as McQueen’s guilt never relinquishes and his pain persists. Constantly with the help of others, his fate is never in his own hands. Odd Man Out is one chaotic night on the run in the streets and homes in a city that grows darker by the hour.

2 The Fugitive

In a patented Harrison Ford role, playing a man who must prove his innocence after his wife is murdered, The Fugitive is a non-stop thriller ride from 90s action stalwart Andrew Davis. Ford stars as the hilariously ripped Dr. Richard Kimble. After a daring train escape in which he frees not only himself but a bevy of other prisoners, Kimble goes back to his home city of Chicago to figure out the conspiracy against him. Also, clearing the way for an Oscar-winning, instantly iconic Tommy Lee Jones performance as the fast-talking US Marshal who runs the show to get Kimble back to prison. It’s an electric ride that gave the man on the run film a new face.

1 North By Northwest

The most absurdly fun and entertaining picture Alfred Hitchcock ever made, North by Northwest is a non-stop ride of close-calls, whodunits, and expertly designed set-pieces. Two of the most famous scenes in the history of cinema happen near 30 minutes apart. The crop-duster close call and then the chase atop Mount Rushmore, one of the ultimate bad guy hangouts. Hitchcock relied on the always reliable and cool Cary Grant to face off against the suave villainy of James Mason as Grant has to get himself out of false murder accusations. A path that leads him down a dangerous road but done in the style that only the master himself could direct.

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Run review: American Horror Story star Sarah Paulson's thriller is a wild, twisted ride

Mother knows best, right?

The thriller about a mother who has a very twisted idea of love for her daughter was originally set for a fitting Mother's Day cinema release in the US, before cinemas closing down put paid to that . It came out on Hulu in the US in November, and the wait in the UK is finally over as it's out now on Netflix.

As great as it would have been to see Run on the big screen, the thriller doesn't lose any of its edge with its streaming premiere. If anything, there's an added relevance given that, like most of the people watching, it's about a person who is effectively stuck in their own home due to circumstances out of their control.

And whether it was on the big or small screen, Run still has the goods to keep you on the edge of your seat, constantly in the dark at what wild turn the thriller will make next.

With a lean runtime of 90 minutes, Run wastes little time in setting up its premise and remains propulsive throughout.

After a montage of an ordinary day for Diane (Paulson) and her daughter Chloe (newcomer Kiera Allen), it doesn't take long for Chloe – and the audience – to get suspicious of the reasons why Chloe is being kept in total isolation by her mother, as she has been since birth.

An errant pharmacy receipt starts Chloe questioning everything she thought about her life, leading her to uncover secrets that will forever change her relationship with her mother. Does mother really know best?

The unexpected joy with Run is that it's barely 30 minutes in when it plays its – admittedly very guessable – hand. You're expecting it to drag out the revelation, but it blindsides you with it and sets the stage for a thriller that will keep you guessing as it takes increasingly wild turns.

Anyone who's seen the innovative Searching will know that director Aneesh Chaganty and co-writer Sev Ohanian know how to deliver a surprise. Run takes this up a notch as you're so convinced what the movie's reveal will be that you forget to think about the numerous other dark turns it'll take.

At times, things do get a bit trashy and ridiculous, but Run 's strength lies in the casting of Sarah Paulson and its ace-in-the-deck Kiera Allen who delivers an outstanding debut performance.

Their characters in the credits are referred to as "Mother" and "Daughter" and, in truth, they don't get much fleshing-out in the script. However, Paulson and Allen are so committed to the roles that they round out what could be thin stereotype roles, and ensure that the ludicrous twists are met with shock and not an eye-roll.

There's few better around than Paulson at playing a slightly off-centre role, so it'll be no surprise to people that she's magnetic in Run . What will be a surprise is the performance of Allen, managing to hold her own against Paulson in what is effectively a two-hander movie.

An added freshness is added to the role of Chloe in that Allen is a wheelchair user, marking the first time a wheelchair user has starred in a major thriller in more than 70 years (according to the press notes – though we think Christopher Reeve might have disputed that claim had the elastic word "major" not provided a get-out regarding the 1998 remake of Rear Window ). It adds an authenticity to the scenes when Chloe has to use ingenious methods to escape from Diane.

Allen's performance means you're fully on her side ("I'm paralysed, feel bad for me") and willing her to survive, crucial in such a lean and pared-back thriller. Hopefully it's the start of a prominent career for her.

Run might not have the innovation of Searching , but it's every bit as gripping and confirms director Aneesh Chaganty as an exciting talent to watch.

It's an old-school thriller told expertly that refuses to let you settle, elevated by two excellent performances from Sarah Paulson and Kiera Allen. If it was in the cinemas, we'd say "run, don't walk" to the next screening, but as it is, you'll just have to run to your TV instead.

Run is available to watch now on Netflix in the UK and on Hulu in the US.

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Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor.  Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies , attending genre festivals around the world.   After moving to Digital Spy , initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.  

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Two teen sisters learn about their family's involvement with a secret program and go on the run to escape the deadly criminals targeting their family. Two teen sisters learn about their family's involvement with a secret program and go on the run to escape the deadly criminals targeting their family. Two teen sisters learn about their family's involvement with a secret program and go on the run to escape the deadly criminals targeting their family.

• Sarah Eisenberg
• Becky Wangberg
• Sofia Masson
• Taylor Geare
• William Mark McCullough
• 2 User reviews
• 1 Critic review

Top cast 18

• (as RaSandra Elizabeth Daniels)

• (as Lorraine Marie Montez)

• Truck Driver

• Police Officer
• (as Eric 'Z' Zaragoza)
• US Marshall

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• August 17, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• Tucumcari, New Mexico, USA (on location)
• Mike Teevee
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• Runtime 1 hour 40 minutes

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Run On’ On Netflix, A Korean Rom-Com About An Athlete And A Fake Gun-Collecting Film Translator

Where to stream:.

• Korean Dramas

Stream It Or Skip It: 'The Frog' On Netflix, About A Mysterious Visitor To A Summer Rental House Who Turns The Owner's Life Inside Out

Stream it or skip it: ‘love next door’ on netflix, a light, romantic “will they or won’t they” korean drama , stream it or skip it: ‘romance in the house’ on netflix, a rags-to-riches k-drama, stream it or skip it: 'red swan' on hulu, about revenge, marriages of convenience, and a woman falling for her bodyguard.

One thing that distinguishes the romantic K-dramas from ones we see in other countries is that they find interesting professions for the people they pair up. In  Run On , a world-class track star is paired up with a person who translates films. Interesting, right? Read on for more.

RUN ON : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A split-screen of a man carefully tying his running shoes and a woman jumping into a pair of purple Chucks. They’re both running, but for different reasons.

The Gist: Oh Me-joo (Shin Se-kyung) is the one sprinting in Chucks; she’s going to a film festival where a film that she translated into English is premiering. In the meantime, national track and field star, Ki Seon-gyeom (Im Si-wan) is attending the festival with his mother, renowned actress Yook Ji-woo (Cha Hwa-yeon), who distracts Me-joo from seeing her credit on screen.

For his part, Seon-gyeom is ambivalent about his career, and his teammates are a mixed bag. The fastest runner, Kwon Young-il (Park Sung-joon) is a bully, and Kim Woo-sik (Lee Jeong-ha) is getting himself beaten up on a regular basis. For Me-joo, she has to deal with the smarmy director of the film she worked on, Han Seok-won (Bae Yoo-ram); she needs him for an interpreting gig that will help her career.

But when she stands up to her former college professor while he spews drunken misogyny, Seok-won runs after her when she exits. Me-joo literally runs into Seon-gyeom, who grabs the fake gun that she dropped and holds it to Seok-won’s face; he takes her gun with him by mistake. They meet again a few days later when she gets robbed trying to buy another fake gun, and he launches an art case owned by a student named Lee Young-hwa (Kang Tae-oh) that hits the guy on the head. This time, after giving their statements to the police, they exchange numbers.

Me-joo swallows her pride and asks the professor for forgiveness, so she can save that interpreting job. Through contacts, though, she’s offered another job, interpreting for an elite athlete as he goes on an international press tour. She’ll be working for sports agency president Seo Dan-a (Sooyoung), who is so cold that she rejects the desire of her visiting brother to spend time together. When she finds out who the athlete is, she’s starting to feel it’s fate.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Run On is one of those K-drama rom-coms that has a more comedic tone, sort of like Crash Landing On You .

Our Take: When we watch K-drama rom-coms, we tend to look at a couple of things: The version of meet-cute that we’re given in the first episode, and the chemistry between the show’s stars.  Run On checks both boxes, making for a solid start, albeit in a convoluted way.

Suffice to say, this is mostly about Seon-gyeom and Me-joo’s romance. There will be time for Dan-a and Young-hwa to connect, but we’re only gathering that from some of the episode descriptions and coming attractions. There are a lot of supporting players, and most of them do well with their roles. But there is plenty of chemistry between the leads, Shin Se-kyung and Im Se-wan, to carry this show for however many episodes it’ll run.

We’re especially impressed with Shin Se-kyung as Me-joo. She’s got some good comic timing, and she can hold a look as well as any actor in the K-dramas we’ve seen to this point. Her character has more of the comedic heavy lifting to do, as it seems that Seon-gyeom is a very serious and thoughtful character. But perhaps as they get closer, she’ll make him less serious.

What we weren’t impressed with are the machinations that got these two together to begin with. Like we said, it was a bit convoluted; Me-joo has to stand up to the professor, grabbing his toupee in the process, then beg for his forgiveness, then get hired for this job. And for the meet-cutes, she’s got to buy a fake gun from a guy on the other end of the headset on the MMPG she plays. Is this unusual for K-dramas? Not really. But the maneuvering to get these two crazy kids together seemed to be more twisty than usual. But once the show settles down, that maneuvering won’t matter much.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Me-joo extends her hand to formally introduce herself to Seon-gyeom. He makes a “bang” gesture like she did the last time they met. “I have your lighter,” he says. “Are you really insane?” she asks. “I’m Ki Seon-geyom,” he replies. Okaaayyy….

Sleeper Star: We’d watch a series about Me-joo’s film distributor friend Park Mae-yi (Lee Bong-ryun). She’s got more cajones than any of the men on this series.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Dan-a’s brother Seo Tae-woong (Choi Jae-hyun) impulsively smashes a planter behind her desk, she doesn’t want her assistant to clean it up. Wow. We’d have him out with the broom immediately.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The characters in  Run On have more than enough dimension to make the romance between its leads fun to follow.

Should you stream or skip the Korean rom-com #RunOn on @netflix ? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) December 17, 2020

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream  Run On On Netflix

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Home Film Film Reviews

16 August 2024 12:00 PM

‘The Outrun’ review: a thought provoking and sobering watch

This intimate drama is another great showcase of saoirse ronan's talents..

By Anna Smith

If you’re a film fan, you probably already know that Saoirse Ronan is one of the best actors of her generation – this intimate drama is another great showcase of her talents. It’s based on Amy Liptrot’s best-selling memoir, detailing her life as a recovering alcoholic in her childhood home of Orkney, flashing back to her life in London.

Director Nora Fingscheidt keeps the pace leisurely enough to dig deep into characters, while adding tension through mystery. We are slowly drip fed details about the past of Ronan’s character Rona – we see glimpses into her initially happy relationship with her boyfriend (Paapa Essiedu), their party loving lifestyle and Rona’s descent into alcoholism.

Meanwhile on Orkney, she has a fractious relationship with her religious mother (Saskia Reeves) and tries to keep herself busy with a job that involves spotting rare birds – hey, this is Orkney. The landscape looks brutally beautiful, and there’s a vivid sense of isolation and loneliness.

But The Outrun is most powerful, and unusual, in its depiction of addiction, using Liptrot’s words and experiences to convey the compulsion, the secrecy, the blackouts, the misery. And when there are no words, Ronan speaks volumes with a single look. A thought provoking and sobering watch.

‘The Outrun’ will open the 77th Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) (August 15-21) and is on general release September 27.

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