Runner Runner (2013) Run Away From This One

Runner Runner (2013) 20th Century Fox

By me watching this movie and by you reading this you can safely know that you dodged a bullet. At first, I was wondering how a movie starring JT, Gemma Arterton, and Ben Affleck was so poorly advertised, but found out after its run time of over 1 hour and 33 minutes. Runner Runner has the semblance of a decent film. I would call it the skeletal structure of a film, but lacks any meat. From the beginning of the film you are supposed to be interested in the character of Richie First (JT), but throughout the film you are looking for reasons to keep watching because he is THAT uninteresting. Furthermore the role Affleck plays is hopefully not a foreshadowing of what kind of work he will do in Batman. It looked like he didn't even try to be his character, it looked like he was just picking up another check. To be honest, I have only really liked him in Good Will Hunting (1997) and he was really carried by performances from Matt Damon and Robin Williams. The redeeming performance of the movie came from Anthony Mackie who actually had delivered some good lines in the portrayal, but sadly the character was as underdeveloped as the rest of the cast. I thought that Gemma Arterton had the good sense to stay away from scripts like this because of the goodwill she has built up for worthy performances like Prince of Persia (2010) and Clash of the Titans (also 2010). Both of those films weren’t the greatest but they were at least passable. Runner Runner was unable to portray the emotions of real people in a specific situation and you find yourself caring less and less about each character as time goes on. The plot line is somewhat similar to the feelings you have at a poker game. You keep waiting for a good turn card to lead up to the river, but it just doesn’t come. It’s safe to say that I did not enjoy the film and thought that even the cinematography could have used some work. For some reason you always feel far away from what is happening because the camera is always focused on the surroundings and not the characters which is a good way to pretty much sum up the film.

As a Sidenote: I have lived in Costa Rica and it was easy to identify they were not filming there although they did go through the ruse of having Costa Rican beer (Imperial) and jerseys from a basketball team from Jacó. The reason they probably went to these lengths is that there is a lot of bribery in the film and Puerto Rico did not want bad press for their police departments. I guess Costa Rica was just a scapegoat, but the landscape wasn’t even passable in most places. It was obvious from certain scenes that they were on an island.