You Can’t Run Forever (2024)

You-Can't-Run-Forever
You Can’t Run Forever

Sociopath is almost a mascot for J.K. Simmons’s public persona. There’s something rather impressive about an actor such as Simmons because he can go from a guy who appears to be on a normal street in a normal neighborhood, to a psychotic whacko with an intimidating smile that is perfectly positioned. Most of You Can’t Run Forever is fun for him, and he must have had a good time shooting it because it was written, directed, and produced by his wife with whom he has spent almost thirty years. Shame that he is the only one enjoying himself. You will be not’.

Let’s be fair, however, ‘You Can’t Run Forever(2024)’ does start with a bang, which is certainly memorable, but one that announces the unmistakable tonal difficulties that lie ahead. Simmons’ Wade reaches a very remote gas station in time to watch a fight between a couple who are seated outside a convenience shop and an angry man with a small, barking dog. Rather than having a discussion lightly and a couple of fights with him, he resolves the problem by shooting the dog owners and the couple and driving fast into the sunset. This man is mad. And not just your regular Movie Villain mad. One of the scenes shows his masturbation in the picture of the wife of the man he has just killed. In one version, “You Can’t Run Forever” becomes “High Tension” or “Martyrs”, where it fully embraces the sanguinary concepts of violence.

In her defense, Michelle Schumacher, the director, never had the guts to make that specific movie. Such scenes feel as if they’re being directed with little energy causing Simmons to feel that he’s in a movie with an identity crisis. At this time, the film gets going when Wade meets Eddie (Allen Leech) and his stepdaughter Miranda (Isabelle Anaya). Wade kills Eddie and sends Miranda into the bushes to live. Somewhere at home, however, Miranda’s mother Jenny (Fernanda Urrejola) is very pregnant and in a panic, whilst the clueless local police seem to have their own comical problems trying to investigate their area’s first homicides – the film’s best scene centers around a bumbling sheriff’s deputy who’s trying to figure out how it all works in the book. Wade is looking for Miranda in the woods. This is your standard ‘Most Dangerous Game’ tale, with the setting switched up a bit for variety.

However, it is not, actually. It’s that more frightening for that reason Schumacher and co-writer Carolyn Carpenter clearly have their “predator vs. prey” framework and do not believe in it as they self-destructively resolve any budding tensions by cutting to a distraught Jenny or the small-town officers trying to solve a mystery that is entirely missing.

And when the flashbacks make an attempt to provide Wade with some vague reason for what he is doing, it only makes things worse. Movies like this work well when there is at least one faceless killer with no realistic motives to compel the victim into bringing out the best within him or her. But such a blunt version of thriller which is a direct confrontation with the characters needs a lot of faith in the delivering ensemble performers, as well as in such creative partners as editors or cinematographers who would inevitably shape the scenario as a menacing one. “You Can’t Run Forever” builds no tension whatsoever in the scenarios and execution. It’s like a documentary, where a half-baked idea strengthens only because an Oscar winner features in it.

Let’s start with that Oscar winner there is a certain sick satisfaction in witnessing a performer who just obliterates everything around him. A piercing gaze, a deranged grin that appears when he knows he is in control, and an authentic sense of dread – that’s all in Simmons’ castings. And still, none of his scene partners wants to get up and do what he is trying to do, which makes for a very strange sort of passive-aggressive relationship that comes across like watching a Z-grade film with David Beckham’s character. Schumacher resorts to cliched and stale devices in the hope that everything else around her star will work, and she comes with her share of exploitation devices when she resorts to plot devices like suicide and the hazards of giving birth at the onset of the film, but all these Never reach Simmons. He’s, however, moving so quickly that the movie cannot follow.

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