Running On Empty

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Film Description

In 1971, Arthur and Annie Pope blew up a napalm lab in protest against the Vietnam War. Ever since, they have been on the run from the FBI, choosing to live as a family of refugees rather than be separated. Now their son, 17 year old Danny, has to decide whether to take up a music scholarship or deny his talent to be with his family, as his mother did for him. There are no easy answers.

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Review by Howard Schumann on 19th October 2005

Running on Empty is a sympathetic look at a family in hiding from the authorities as a result of having committed a bomb attack on a napalm laboratory in 1970 to protest the Vietnam War. The attack left a janitor blinded and led to the pursuit of the family by the FBI for fifteen years. Directed by Sidney Lumet, the film describes the disruption in the lives of the parents, Arthur and Annie Pope (Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti) and its effect on their two sons, 17-year-old Danny (River Phoenix) and 10-year-old Harry (Jonas Abry). It is a powerful depiction of the conflicting pressures that the family faces as a result of their violent protest.

The Popes have to be one step of the FBI just to keep out of their grasp. This means repeatedly changing locations and identities and falsifying school records for their children. Danny is a talented pianist whose remarkable abilities are discovered when he enrolls in a music class at a suburban high school in New Jersey. Things get complicated when Danny falls in love with Lorna Phillips (Martha Plimpton), the daughter of his music teacher (Ed Crowley). The music teacher convinces Danny to audition for the Julliard School of Music in New York, and he desperately wants to live his own life but knows that if he goes to College, he may never see his parents again.

The film does not judge its characters but views them as fallible human beings who have made a mistake and must pay the price, even though what they did was an act of conscience to stop the napalming of civilians in Vietnam. That they want to keep the family together is about a parental love that is so deep that the thought of never seeing their children again is overwhelming.

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