Running on Empty

There are great performances in the central roles. Phoenix essentially carries the story; it's about him. Lahti and Hill have that shattering scene together. And Lahti and Hirsch, huddled together in bed, fearfully realizing that they may have come to a crossroads, are touching; we see how they've depended on each other. This is one of the best films of the year. Read full review

Sophisticated, uncompromising and refreshingly original, it is one of those rare films which is likely to mean as much to teens as it does to their parents. Read full review

Both acting (particularly Phoenix) and characterisation are top-notch. A film about lives indelibly marked by the past, and by the lies we tell each other just to protect ourselves, it displays the narrative sophistication and ironic grasp of moral and emotional nuances characteristic of Lumet's best work. Read full review

Although Lumet has a reputation for letting his actors run wild, he keeps the reins tight here, and we're rewarded with a series of superb performances. [16 Sep 1988]

The film is first and foremost a family drama, where the politics that led to this predicament take a back seat to the people who find themselves in it. Read full review

A complex, turbulent tale told with admirable simplicity. Film successfully operates on several levels – as study of the primacy of the family unit, an anguished teen romance, a coming-of-age story and a look at what happened to some political radicals a generation later. Read full review

Running on Empty, for all its implausibilities and pseudo-radical bourgeois banter, is an unusually engaging movie. [14 Oct 1988, p.10]

At first glance, Running on Empty seems a humane, if rickety, left-wing tearjerker, with strong acting propping up a weak script. It takes a second glance to get at what's really interesting about the film - its subtext. [30 Sep 1988, p.33]

Running on Empty works best when it plays upon emotions generated by the Popes' unique predicament, something that it often does rather shamelessly. It helps that Sidney Lumet has directed the film in a crisp, handsome style that diminishes the maudlin or unlikely aspects of its story, even when they threaten to intrude. Read full review

Improbable as some of the plot may be, Lumet's movie -- directed with artful simplicity -- strikes powerful emotional chords. Running on Empty also happens to be the year's best teen romance: quirky Lorna (Martha Plimpton), in stubborn rebellion against her family's Wasp propriety, is a delightfully real teenager. [03 Oct 1988, p.57]

Despite Lumet's home-spun pincer movement on the espionage/conspiracy genres, cliché still sneaks up and nips the film into submission. Read full review

Lumet develops his story at a leisurely but effective pace, allowing the dynamics of a family in transition--not the sudden appearance of the FBI or an action-paced chase--to give the film its tension. Phoenix delivers a convincing, serious performance, and the rest of the cast, save for the miscast Hirsch, is also strong. Read full review

The weaknesses of the film are twofold: an inability to convey any convincing grasp of the present beyond the family's present (and ongoing) situation, and a belt-and-suspenders heavyhandedness that has always been Lumet's biggest stumbling block in driving home a dramatic climax. Read full review

A John Hughes-ish teen drama unaccountably complicated by politics and method acting. Read full review

Lumet patches his film together with a quilt of cliches. He wants you to like his characters so much -- to sympathize with their loss -- that he sticks them in unlikely situations that drip with sentimentality. [14 Oct 1988, p.E6]

A Sidney Lumet movie is loose. It's a big vehicle, loaded with the usual artistic statement. But Running on Empty is coasting downhill fast. Read full review

Actors here perform admirably, though they seem not to know exactly what they're supposed to be playing and so they are reduced to giving us mere moments. But playing these characters would be impossible anyway. They're like composites constructed out of cross-section surveys of baby boomers, and Lumet leaves out any notion of personal psychology or motive. It's as if his characters acted only in response to generational forces. Read full review