The Runaways - DVD Review

'Sigismondi's inexperience shows when she has to stop the drug-taking and music-playing and focus on inconvenient side steps like plot, dialogue and interaction'

Less a coherent, narrative-led film, more a collection of scenes loosely dealing with the same subject matter (rock music, drugs, depravity, youthfulness or the lack thereof), The Runaways is a messy trawl through a messy time. Directed by Floria Sigismondi, for whom this is clearly a passion project (she also wrote the script), the film is the Italian's first. It shows.

It shows mainly when Sigismondi has to stop the drug-taking and music-playing and focus on inconvenient side steps like plot, dialogue and interaction. Witness a turning-point scene where band members round on Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) for taking part in a fashion shoot which is more chic chick than rock chick. The conflict feels false and forced, the messy metaphor of the walls falling down (they literally do) is clunky and unconvincing.

Michael Shannon is good as ringmaster Kim Fowley but herein lies another problem with the film: it's lack of detachment or criticism. Fowley is clearly manipulating The Runaways for his own ends but here he's comic relief. Currie, just fifteen when she joined the band, looks dangerously like she is a victimised child although by whom she is victimised and how much blame anyone should take for it seems to pass over the director without a second thought. Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart), a central figure in all this and the most recognisable name on display, is basically a bystander with a moody look and a wicked leather jacket. She is categorically not a 'character' in the sense that characters undergo development and speak lines which have an impact on the action.

If this isn't a successful music-biopic then what is it? It can only be fan art and given that label the film perks slightly. The concert scenes are well directed, the music still feels raw, edgy and slightly out of control, the characters (faults with depiction of said 'characters' not withstanding) are straight out of the type of Rock Opera that sells out Broadway theatres. There's a lot to say about The Runaways. Sadly, Sigismondi says pretty much none of it.

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