So, #411 got the chance to check out Kristen Stewart's rock-heavy The Runaways this week, and Team 411 is bringing their review to you!Do be warned, though, there are a few spoilers!
I was very fortunate this week and got to attend a screening of The Runaways, the much-anticipated rock biopic of the 1970’s all-girl punk band of the same name. Dakota Fanning stars as lead singer Cherie Currie and Kristen Stewart stars as Joan Jett. As big a fan of Kristen as I am, Joan Jett is my original girlcrush. I love her, I love The Runaways, so of COURSE, I was beyond stoked to see the movie now, instead of in March. So how did I like it? It was a better movie than even I expected--I was extremely nervous of first time writer-director Floria Sigismondi--but it wasn’t flawless. I did have a few issues with it, mostly revolving around pacing problems through the middle of the film. Let’s get on with the review. Please note, this will be spoiler heavy.
The acting makes this movie. Too often in a music movie the soundtrack takes first precedence, but here the acting is the center of the movie. The three central performances--Kristen as Jett, Dakota as Currie, and Michael Shannon as sleazy record producer Kim Fowley--are the lynch pin for the whole film. Shannon walks away with the entire film. He stomps all over everyone else, stealing scenes and chewing up scenery. Crazy costumes, over the top soliloquies--Fowley is THE role in the movie and Shannon makes the most of it.
Kristen gives a ferocious, fearless performance as Jett. Her Jett is no naïve waif. When their sound check is shut down by the headlining band, Rush, Jett retaliates by urinating on their guitars. She does drugs (at one point she snorts so much coke that her face is covered in powder), makes out with chicks, and thrashes her guitar with wild abandon. Her best scenes are with Shannon as their Jett and Fowley play off each other. Whether it’s writing songs like “Cherry Bomb” on the fly or engaging in screaming matches, Stewart and Shannon are perfect foils who bring most of the snap to the movie.
As for Dakota, her performance is the best I’ve seen from her in years. In turns a sweet-faced Valley Girl and Glamazon rocker in towering platforms, Currie is by this much [ ] the lead role in the movie. We see more of Currie’s home life than Jett’s, as Currie leaves her twin sister, Marie (played by Riley Keough), to deal with their alcoholic father. We also see Currie’s mother (Tatum O’Neal) abandoning her daughters to raise themselves as she moves to Indonesia. Currie soon bails for life on the road with The Runaways. Dakota goes for a vulnerable, “little girl lost” vibe that mostly works for Currie, especially as she is overwhelmed by a combination of drugs, exhaustion, and exploitation.
It’s been the big hype of the film--the kissing scene between KStew and DFann. But in context of the movie it comes and goes, another moment in a complicated relationship. They make out, the off-camera suggestion is that they have a night together, and then Dakota is standing on a table in Currie’s iconic corset and fishnets, saying, “I’m going to wear this,” daring Jett to tell her no. Their chemistry sparks most when they’re fighting, as when Jett snarls, “Sell the music, not your crotch,” at Currie as Jett throws a magazine full of soft-core photos of Currie at her. The Runaways works best when it’s splitting time evenly between the two.
As for the rest of the cast, Keough and O’Neal stand out the most. Scout Taylor-Compton and Stella Maeve don’t have much to do as Lita Ford and Sandy West, respectively, but Compton nails the physicality of Ford playing a guitar. Alia Shawkat is totally wasted as Robin Robins, the generic bassist. (The producers couldn’t secure the life rights for The Runaways’ first bassist, Jackie Fox, so they created a composite called Robin.) Shawkat had no lines and was little more than background scenery. Ford and West were also underrepresented, although Compton gets a nice scene toward the end, having a blow out with Jett in the recording studio.
Though it is her first feature film, writer-director Floria Sigismondi has had a lengthy career as a music video director, helming videos for Marilyn Manson, The White Stripes, and The Cure. She brings a highly developed visual style to The Runaways which is especially suited to a ’70’s era look. There’s a grainy quality to the film and her trademark zoom-in, zoom-out cuts echo the sort of filmmaking that was considered so raw and edgy in the ’70’s. The concert footage is especially strong, looking as though it came from the actual shows The Runaways performed over thirty years ago. The production/artistic design are incredible. 1970’s Los Angeles is represented in all its punky, grimy glory without ever crossing into kitsch or dewy-eyed nostalgia.
Where Sigismondi stumbles a bit is with pacing and editing problems. Some scenes linger a bit too long, others are redundant. For instance, while on tour in Japan there’s a shot of Currie standing, exhausted, in her shower. It cuts immediately to Currie standing, exhausted, in an elevator. The shower scene accomplishes nothing, especially since the elevator scene climaxes with Currie collapsing once the doors open. Also, the camera tends to linger too long on Dakota’s face. Her performance is somewhat hindered by this, giving it a vacuity that I don’t think is really there. It’s just a wee bit too much staring off into space. That’s a problem throughout the film that could easily be fixed with some minor re-tooling. Things slow down and get draggy in the middle as the story focuses in on Currie, but then it picks back up at the end when Sigismondi goes back to cutting between Currie and Jett dealing with the band’s breakup.
The soundtrack is awesome. Sigismondi has confirmed the tracks the actresses recorded for the movie will be included, as well as original recordings by The Runaways. The only song we see performed fully in the movie is “Cherry Bomb,” but there are also clips of “Queens of Noise,” “Dead End Justice”, and Kristen singing “Playing with Fire.” Though she doesn’t sing the track, Kristen delivers chills when she picks up a guitar and begins jamming on “I Love Rock ’n Roll.” There are nods to Runaways influences Suzi Quatro and David Bowie, there’s a smidge of the Sex Pistols, but The Ramones are oddly absent.
Overall this is a solid, if predictable, rock biopic that benefits from three fantastic performances. Kristen and Michael Shannon are the standouts, and with a little bit of cleaning up in the editing room, Dakota’s performance would lose that maybe-accidental-vapidity that’s flattening it right now. It’s a little disappointing in its failure to maintain the wild energy of the first thirty minutes (please cut out Currie constantly staring off into space!), but The Runaways is an entertaining love letter to ’70’s punk and a band that broke the gender barrier for future generations.
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