Runners (1983) User Reviews

Slightly dreary

[Marlburian · 6/10 · 24 July 2019]

I've just watched a reasonable copy of "Runners" on YouTube, with just a few minutes of indistinct dialogue.

Recently Stephen Poliakoff has re-visited the theme of a desperate parent searching for a missing child with a sub-plot in the TV series "Summer of Rockets". In both cases I became a bit impatient with the parent's obsession and the unlikelihood of success, and when the child was finally tracked down it seemed implausible.

As other reviewers have noted, we never learn what prompted an apparently happy Rachel to disappear. Nor do we know who tipped off her father about her whereabouts and why.

Quite a few of the outdoor scenes - such as at stations and in Burlington Arcade - appeared to have been shot with unwitting members of the public rather than extras. This did impart some realism, though in one case a queue of rail passengers were staring at the camera.

Kate Hardie, 14 when the film was released, does very well as Rachel.

As a fan of old black-and-white films featuring London in the 1950s, I was interested to see some familiar 1980s' localities.

Teenage runaways in London..

[terrencesmith666 · 7/10 · 24 February 2005]

This film written by a fledgling Stephen Poliakoff and directed by Charles Sturridge wasn't given a proper theatrical release as far as I'm aware but was played a few times on television in the early eighties. It deals in a realistic and sometimes grim and dirty manner with the subject of teenage runaways, following the story of a girl who runs away from her (relatively loving) family to live in London. She ends up homeless, her parents don't hear from her and her father sets out to find her. Apart from an interesting if depressing soundtrack and some very memorable shots of desolate parts of London, dirty train stations and an empty indoor pool, the film does have a slightly TV-movie production quality to it, although perhaps this is because I only managed to see it broadcast. An interesting early work from Poliakoff.

Pay attention

[Cinebuff38 · 7/10 · 13 August 2021]

I have watched many dramas written by Stephen poliafoff, most of which I liked, the odd one or two I didn't. Runners is about a father searching for her daughter who goes missing shortly after riding off on her bycicle one morning.

There are some reviewers here who say her dissapearance wasn't explained. It was explained. Albeit it wasn't a painting by numbers expanation. Most story tellers arn't going to spoon feed us answers by all but having the actors look at the camera and say 'this is what happened folks' . Those of you who didn't get it, I suggest you watch the film again, or at least the last half hour or so and pay attention! It was recently shown on film four, and so should come round again. I'm not going to give any explanations here as I don't want to spoil it for anyone who has not seen it.

Almost Molested

[tedg · 22 September 2008]

This is a strangely annoying film, because it seems to be 2/3 of a good film in many ways.

There are stories — welcome ones — that leave us with mysteries that tantalize us an because they are open can weave into our real lives.

This attempts that I think. I do not know the writer, but this seems his intent. We are never told why this girl runs away and why she so adamantly will not return. We never know what she does, with whom she lives, how she earns money. We don't know if there was sexual molestation involved, or prostitution, or some religious cult. We end up knowing nothing except that tensions and urges are significant.

It could have worked, but to do so, you have to find the story outside the story. The father is obsessive, but we don't know why. Well, even that could be open, but somewhere in the layers of what we unroll there needs to be some causality. It can be diffuse: the world is just that way — but it has to be there. Because we need a thread to follow. It can be after we leave the theater. It can be way off to the side of what we've watched. It doesn't have to be connected by invisible strings to explain everything. But there has to be at least one causal hook that we can imagine runs through the thing.

Otherwise, its all just plastic bags blowing on the street.

I came to this because it has Jane Asher as a real actress in a substantial part. She was probably intended to be the embodiment of that missing causality. In fact, the role I imagine was intended, was probably written for her because she played a similar role in Beatle Paul's life. She could have done it, I think. But she is given only 2/3s of a character to play. And she simply enters and leaves without leaving so much as a smudge.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Runners

[Prismark10 · 6/10 · 29 August 2022]

Runners from 1983 would be such a different film if it was made today.

The world of social media and instant communication makes the film antiquated.

In that sense Runners stands as a period piece regarding missing young people.

Rachel Lindsay (Kate Hardie) suddenly disappears from her Midlands home one day. Her parents Tom Lindsay (James Fox) and Gillian Lindsay see her bike that was involved in an accident.

There is no trace of Rachel. It is dad Tom who is obsessed about finding her back.

After joining a missing kids support group. He finds a soulmate in Helen (Jane Asher) whose young son has also ran away.

Two years later Tom thinks he has caught a glimpse of Rachel.

Written by Stephen Poliakoff, he is still trying to find a footing in writing for the cinema. Runners was co-funded by the fledgling Film Four.

It does lack momentum and is caught between trying to be a feature film and instead looking like a dark gritty television movie.

Runners examines Tom's obsession in finding his daughter, his deteriorating relationship with his wife. The lost world of the parents who are left behind not knowing what happened to their loved ones.

There is a scene where Helen thinks that she has found her son, not realising that he would now be several years older. His last look being etched into her mind. That of a small kid.

When Tom does find his daughter, she does not want to return home. Leaving Tom even more frustrated and confused.

I think the reasons why Rachel ran away and not want to come back home needed to be explored more. She certainly did not seem to understand the hurt caused to her family left behind.

You will find this bitterly disappointing .

[johnny-mills-393-825082 · 4/10 · 19 June 2021]

All highly implausible - although you are pleased the girl is found you never find out why she left and doesn't want to go home . The father behaves like a crackpot . Only blessing is seeing sights of London from 1983 . I really felt let down and frustrated at the end .

Implausible

[malcolmgsw · 5/10 · 29 October 2022]

This first half of this film when Fox is searching for his daughter with Jane Asher is quite good. However the minute she leaves the film,slightly over halfway through,the interest drops off.

The chain of events which leads to him finding his daughter is about a million to one.

Having found her she refuses to come home. Maybe its because her fathers onsessive behaviour is reflected in his everyday life. However it then completely detaches from reality at the end when he lets his by now 13 year old daughter go as she will not return home. One would have thought that in such a situation he would have contacted social services so that she could be put in to care. So the film left me feeling very disatisfied.

a vital, sadly neglected 80s gem, 'Runners' is long overdue a worthy HD restoration.

[Weirdling_Wolf · 9/10 · 1 July 2022]

Written by Stephen Poliakoff and excitingly directed by Charles Sturridge, 'Runners' is an exemplary drama about a comfortably off, middle-class family whose lives are shattered after the sudden disappearance of their eldest daughter Rachel (Kate Hardie). Two years interminably pass, their case becomes cold, the news media is disinterested, yet the resolute father (James Fox), single-mindedly, bordering on obsession, still ardently believes that his daughter is alive, and Stoically, he undertakes the Herculean task of trying to find his beloved Rachel somewhere in the oppressive vastness of London. After taking a room in a hotel his ceaseless peregrinations lead him wearily through the multitudinously grey, unlovely tributaries of the city, desperate appeals are made on the radio, hundreds of Xeroxed photos are paraded to disinterested parties; Tom's initial optimism gradually ebbing after the unfathomable deceptions of those dingier denizens he interacts with during his increasingly desperate quest to locate Rachel.

Poliakoff's cogent text paints a unsettlingly vivid tableau of the increasingly frustrated Lindsay family's life disrupting despair, but the most compelling aspects of 'Runners' is the bracingly realistic milieu of London, its colourfully rendered array of not always benign Dickensian characters, and one can sense the unruly stink of decay, poverty, and pernicious vice; a heady, neon-bright metropolis that bedazzles, so enticingly you are distracted from its ruinous, all-consuming, parasite-riddled underbelly. The burgeoning relationship between Tom and fellow sufferer Helen (Jane Asher) is appealingly nuanced, the debilitating grief they share over their missing children binds them fitfully together. Tom, now estranged from his wife Gillian (Eileen O'Brien), is strongly attracted to, and wholly galvanised by Helen's implacable belief that she will be reunited with her missing son. With exceptionally strong performances, dynamic location shooting, George Fenton's lively score, and a refreshingly unsentimental climax, Director Sturridge's rewardingly frank drama remains a vital, sadly neglected 80s gem, 'Runners' is long overdue a worthy HD restoration.

Hidden meaning....maybe?

[Ilovehandbagsandshoes · 9/10 · 20 June 2021]

I caught this film on 4 on demand. I must say it was compelling viewing but pretty bleak.

Somewhere around two thirds of the way through, I realised I was dealing with a hidden theme.

If you swap the experience of the parent, with that of the child, you can see it's about a societal neglect.

All that the children have done is said "if you can't beat them, join them"; adults do not seem have time for the children "because of their jobs".

Then in the second half of the film, the children themselves do not have time for the adults, because of their jobs.

I suppose you could open this view point up and say, once the need for survival is understood, that is the critical point of departure from family life.

Notice how contemporary London then was full of underage workers, yet 'hidden' in plain sight. The film is sometimes clunky and as I t was PoliKoff's first, I think we will forgive him that, and I wonder if this film were reinterpreted now, what else could be made of the abundant tension and intrigue.

I particularly liked how the father's obsession started to tip into insanity, in the view of outsiders and how that view of desperate hope is a cynical observation of existence.

A powerful emotional journey.

[klaatu56 · 10/10 · 12 April 2022]

The power of this movie lies in the characters and the emotional roller coaster that ensues.

The acting, screenplay and direction are exceptional and the psychology here is very realistic and moving, especially between father and daughter.

This movie is a gem, and a journey which is not to be missed.

10/10.

Well Crafted Film with surprising results

[Tony Rome · 10/10 · 7 October 2018]

James Fox plays a father that is obsessed with finding his missing daughter. He encounters a group of people who have children that have gone missing, and attempts to go to London to look for her. He encounters a variety of assorted crazies, grimy streets, and filthy places. The film holds the viewers attention for the entire result with a surprising ending.

Bleak but compelling journey

[michaelberanek275 · 9/10 · 16 June 2022]

Gosh the eighties in Britain looked pretty grim in this darkly shot atmospheric vérité drama from Poliakoff, which is both neatly written and directed. A frequent feature is Victoria station which looks like some kind of jumble sale. The transfer I watched on Freeview seemed smudgy but in a way added to the hazy mood. We have the bereft father scouring grungy London alongside another parent on her own hunt. The characterisations and depth to the story take a while to unravel themselves but it becomes more complex, even philosophical, as we get filled in bit by bit as to the psychodrama, and the parental dynamics are more shown, not told. It's not too harsh actually, as there is a tender side to every interaction, and to a large extent the viewer is left to complete the nightmare exploitative possibilities largely in his or her own head. The pace picks up a bit halfway and I won't venture into spoiler territory, but on the whole the tone is thoughtful rather than dynamic. There's a touch of the drizzly Odyssey through a specific political landscape, with various sketchy yet colourful characters popping up. There's big motifs like the many random juvenile workers crawling out of the woodwork in virtually every scene, Norman Tebbit clearly features on interior graffiti in one scene as does his 'get-on-your bike' trope throughout the screenplay, and a there's this mad nostalgia for youthful fancy in the two adult protagonists for instance all in the mix, and it all makes for a slow and ambiguous reveal. Largely it's metaphorical, apart from a great little unhinged monologue from Dad near the end, and, I guess this is the point, everyone remains as buttoned up and and as so very English as they all began, or is there possibility of repentance? Ultimately it's strangely warm and optimistic. This beguiling little film definitely goes in my 'hidden gem' box.