J.K. Simmons has it down when it comes to sociopaths. There is something intriguing about performers like Simmons staring blankly at the camera and convincingly transforming from an average suburban man to a complete madman with a deliciously evil grin that appears precisely at the right time. In most scenes of “You Can’t Run Forever,” he is having a lot of fun, and one can only assume that co-writing and directing it was a blast for the man who has been married to Simmons for almost thirty years. Unfortunately, all the fun is reserved for him only. You are certainly not going to do that.
In all fairness, “You Can’t Run Forever” does start with a bang that is sure to be remembered, but it’s just a flash of the blatant hitches that will plaguing the audience further down the road. Simmons’ Wade arrives at an unexplained distance only to an intervention where a convenience store has a woman and a couple lunging towards a shouting man and his bouncing dog. He walks directly towards the owner and solves the backing problem by shooting the entire couple and the owner before speeding off in the sunset. He’s crazy. And not the regular kilter of a Movie Villain crazy. In one particular instance, he imagines fondling the incompetent assassin enjoying the picture of the murdered bow’s wife. One does not rule out the possibility of conceiving a variant of “You Can’t Run Forever” which is as entertaining as “High Tension” or “Martyrs”, without a grain of salt, modern society is quite prone to such conceptions.
The director Michelle Schumacher is the core of the problem as it seemed she was too shy to make that picture. The main character is always on stilts and losing the tonal control of the story and Sovins directs the sequences in a leaden manner making Simmons feel as if he is trapped in a picture where there is no clue whatsoever for his presence. The action really picks up when Wade meets Eddie (Allen Leech) and his stepdauther Miranda (Isabelle Anaya), killing the former and abandoning the young woman in the woods in an effort to outlast her. During this time, Miranda’s very pregnant mother Jenny (Fernanda Urrejola) is freaking out at the house while the useless local police are bumbling around trying to understand the first murder which ever happened in the area which is definitely the best of the film’s sequence which has a director wannabe deputy looking through and following a manual on how to treat a crime scene. Wright is now a bounty hunter, or Miranda is again the victim and the hunter this time is Wade.
How could it be when it is true at all? Schumacher and Carolyn Carpenter do not to trust their (well aren’t we all the prey and the predator) concept and so the tension their work instills is balaced by cutting back to a frustrated Jenny or the police officers wading in a relatively quiet panic trying to catch the loony ghost who is goresing harmless couple after couple in their town.
Also, when recollections flash back in a portrait style and makes excuse to Wade for what he’s doing, it becomes wenchier. This type of film is only effective with a heartless and unmoved-by-motives-haunted protagonist who pushes a meek victim into subduing her inner self. But such a direct ‘one on one’ thriller requires some sort of faith in the all who participate from the performers to the editor procrastinated on the itchy idea of creating a menacing environment. There is absolutely no tension in this movie “You can’t run forever.” Everything seems to be too easy , too fun, too utopian even a project that would evaporate in thin air were it not for the oscar winner in the middle of it.
Believe it or not, there are some Oscar winners that are both repulsive and fascinating—like watching someone in a play who is blindingly great, and everything else is sheer rubbish. The tight malevolence of his gaze, the sardonic smirk he has when he knows he is in control, the true menace—all this and more is to be found in Simmons’ choices. And yet none of his scene partners rises up to the challenge of what he’s trying to do to them, creating some strange frenemy situation akin to an all-star game where the superstars are surrounded by washed-out bums. Simultaneously, Schumacher herself resorts to basic tricks of emotional manipulation to elevate everything that surrounds her star; even the overused stock of suicide and the threat of giving birth, but all of these are unworthy of Simmons. It’s going full speed, so to speak, only the film can’t follow him.
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