Alan Ritchson and Owen Wilson are good company, and the car stunts deliver. But Scott Waugh’s uneven action comedy struggles to make its jokes, violence and sentiment belong in the same film.
Runner has enough good car stunts and companionable bickering to make its failings a nuisance, but not enough to earn a recommendation. Scott Waugh is attempting a brisk action comedy with a delivery deadline, two leads who can spar and a life at stake. At 97 minutes, that sounds like a manageable evening’s work. The trouble is how often the film stops being enjoyable while trying to become more exciting, funnier or more affecting.
Alan Ritchson gives Hank Malone a presence the writing has not quite earned, and Owen Wilson makes a useful partner as Ben. Their exchanges are the most dependable source of humour, even when the material is doing little beyond setting up another disagreement. We can enjoy their company for a scene without learning much about either man. Writers Tommy White and Miles Hubley seem content to let the casting handle that, which works until the action pauses and the characters have to sustain our interest.
We enjoyed the car stunts, which supply the clean excitement the rest of the film keeps interrupting. Lorenzo Senatore’s cinematography shares the credit for these passages, where moving vehicles give the action a force that the fights struggle to match. Ritchson can hold our attention, but physical presence alone does not make every confrontation exciting. Waugh is at his most convincing when he lets the stunts do the work, without asking a joke or an appeal for sympathy to accompany them.
Matt Villa’s editing is less successful at keeping the whole film moving than the individual action passages suggest it ought to be. The middle stretch lingers over people the screenplay has not made interesting enough, and momentum dwindles between the confrontations. The bickering cannot fill every gap. A chase film needs us wondering what might happen next, and too often we are merely waiting for somebody to get on with it.
The violence causes a separate problem for Waugh, because its severity makes the comic interruptions feel careless. We are asked to laugh before the ugliness has had time to settle, then to accept sentiment from characters who have mostly been useful for action and jokes. Charlie Nguyen Kim supplies the music and Enzo Iacono the production design, but neither contribution can solve that problem in the script. The film has not given its people enough substance to make the changes of mood convincing.
Action comedies do not need elaborate biographies, and asking this one for solemn realism would miss the point. They do need the humour to keep us interested in the people being hurt, rather than make their pain seem disposable. Ritchson and Wilson occasionally manage that through sheer rapport, which is why the film remains watchable despite its stumbles. If car stunts are the main attraction, there is something here for a forgiving evening; anyone coming for a fully functioning double act should choose elsewhere.
