Film
What's on at the cinema plus reviews of the latest movie and DVD releases
Bookmark this pageRunning on Empty (1988)
Director: Sidney Lumet
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Growing up is hard, but the difficulties are compounded for 17-year-old Danny Pope (Phoenix) by the fact that Mom and Dad (Lahti and Hirsch) are still on the run years after their engagement in terrorist action against America's napalm bombing raids on Vietnam. Danny merely wants to come to terms with school, girls, and his talent as a musician, but the Popes' record forces them into a nomadic life spent in rented rooms in various towns. This is a rites of passage movie with a difference, in that it's politically intelligent and never crass. Danny's relationships, with family, girlfriend (Plimpton) and teachers are sensitively handled, while the film's attitude towards the value of radical commitment balanced against individual pain is gently probing. 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.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Sidney Lumet
Producer: Amy Robinson, Griffin Dunne
Cast: Christine Lahti, River Phoenix, Judd Hirsch, Jonas Abry, Martha Plimpton, Ed Crowley, LM Kit Carson, Steven Hill, Augusta Dabney full cast
Duration: 116 mins
Most popular on this site
Top Stories
Time Out's 101 Films of the Decade
Ten years, thousands of movies and millions of dollars in international box office, and it all boils down to this
Jim Jarmusch on 'The Limits of Control'
Jim Jarmusch has followed ‘Broken Flowers’ with an esoteric crime mystery. Dave Calhoun speaks to him from his New York office
Richard Linklater on 'Me and Orson Welles'
Dave Calhoun meets the 49-year-old, Houston-born filmmaker Richard Linklater to discuss his new comedy
Our verdict on Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones
Peter Jackson ends a triumphant decade with a sentimental misfire with this lush Alice Sebold adaptation
On the set of Ken Loach's 'Route Irish'
Dave Calhoun meets Ken Loach on the set of his forthcoming Iraq war movie
Is 'Paranormal Activity' the new 'Blair Witch'?
How does a film go from DIY experiment to box-office smash? 'Paranormal Activity' director Oren Peli explains
A gateway to all things 'New Moon'
In anticipation of 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon', Time Out is offering the chance to pick up a limited edition pack with three exclusive magazines and a free poster.
The films that deserve a TV spin-off
With Roland Emmerich suggesting he'd like to make a '2012' TV spin-off, we propose some more movie-to-TV serialisations
Time Out's 50 greatest animated films with commentary by Terry Gilliam
In celebration of the release of Pixar's 'Up' and Wes Anderson's 'Fantastic Mr Fox', read our rundown of fifty classic feature length animations
What do you think?
Post your review now