YOU CAN'T RUN FOREVER - Mark Reviews Movies

You Can't Run Forever, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 16, 2024

The opening scene of You Can't Run Forever watches as a stranger senselessly murders three people and spares two others at a gas station. What's his motive? Is he angry at the way one guy yells at his barking dog and how the other two victims yell at the dog owner for not stopping the pup from making so much noise? Why does he leave two witnesses alive? Is it simply because neither has offended him in some way? The questions left behind by this prologue are unsettling, especially the rhetorical one the killer exits on, after being asked why he just murdered three people for no apparent reason: "Why does it matter?"

The killer here, eventually named Wade, is played by J.K. Simmons, a character actor of notable range beneath his no-nonsense way of delivering lines. He's quite imposing in the early sections of this movie, co-written and directed Michelle Schumacher (who's married to the leading man), because of the calm demeanor he injects into the role, whether Wade is simply pumping gas into his motorcycle or drawing a pistol to shoot some random bystander in the head.

More importantly, there's no background information or baggage to this man at first. He appears out of nowhere, murders without giving away any sign of feeling anything about his actions, and just continues along his way as if he's just completed a routine errand. Wade represents one thing in the first act or so of this story: violence channeled through and concentrated within a man who seems to kill simply because he can. As a villain, the idea of this character is inherently terrifying, because his thoughts and reasons exist only in his mind. He's not letting anyone else in on those secrets.

With that setup for the character, Schumacher and Carolyn Carpenter's screenplay has two basic options for how to proceed. First, it could leave Wade the homicidal enigma he is at the start, leaving him as a force of violence with no apparent rhyme or reason for why he kills. Second, it could explain exactly who he is, what his worldview is, and why he started killing. Either tactic could potential work, of course, although it probably goes without saying that, if the filmmakers are going to dissect the mystery of this character, his background and rationale had better justify removing the very element that makes him so unsettling in the first place.

To put it plainly, the filmmakers do eventually reveal everything we might need to know about Wade, and no, that information isn't nearly as convincing or frightening as Wade's existence as an unknown entity of death. Add to that the fact that the movie surrounding Wade isn't particularly convincing or frightening, either, and the whole affair becomes one of failed potential.

The basic setup has Miranda (Isabelle Anaya), a teenage girl experiencing anxiety and dealing with a traumatic event, being chased by Wade. Leaving her very pregnant mother Jenny (Fernanda Urrejola) at home, the girl and her stepfather Eddie (Allen Leech) head into town to pick up a bassinet for the forthcoming baby. Wade happens upon them at a rest stop along the way, interrupts a heart-to-heart conversation in the car, and begins shooting at them. Miranda escapes into an expanse of forest, but Wade is always right behind her.

Before the chase begins, the movie makes a couple of mistakes with Wade, especially in a scene that shows the aftermath of him killing Eddie. He starts talking to and joking with the corpse, before finding a photo of Jenny in a bikini and deciding to enjoy himself with it. It's tough to tell which part of this undermines the villain more: making him a jokester or turning him into some kind of gross pervert. Either way, it's the start of a downward trend of presenting this man as some embodiment of cold, seemingly unthinking violence, leading to a lecture and a flashback that make his motives so plain that he becomes dull.

At least he's more in line, then, with the rest of the plot. That has Miranda outwitting Wade but making more unnecessary mistakes (including getting a family killed and not noticing what kind of mushrooms she finds in a bag until after she eats some) and a pair of Sheriff's deputies (played by Graham Patrick Martin and Andres Velez) not adding anything to the material. Meanwhile, Eddie's daughter Emily (Olivia Simmons) starts a misguided and anticlimactic search party, and Jenny wails and, with purely dumb luck, stumbles upon Wade's back story, until a third-act turn that depends on multiple people forgetting what's happening here.

Basically, You Can't Run Forever becomes a series of ill-advised storytelling choices battling a string of dumb ones. We lose.

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