Running on Empty (1988)

Watched 7/26/24 (The Internet)

River Phoenix was one of the only actors to become cooler the more upset his characters became. Really only Phoenix and Eastwood have ever achieved that feat—and somehow Phoenix did it with tears. There was something so strangely watchable as he broke down at the low points in his various roles, perhaps stemming from the juxtaposition that he would play such a tight-jawed masculine type in many of his films to start. The polarity between his cool and collected alpha vs the sensitivity he would turn on at a moment’s notice made you want to both smile and cry with him at the same time. It was mesmerizing. Phoenix could play a nerd, jock, and regular guy just doing his best all at once. What other actors have we had that can do that?

You almost have to believe that Phoenix was carrying a lot of pain somewhere deep down, in part because of the way he passed away but predominantly because of the way that the kid could turn on the tears and redden his face and twist his mouth into that ugly boy-cry that we never want to show. It just felt so darn genuine every time. There are multiple scenes in 1988’s Running on Empty, a drama concerning a family on the lam, where Phoenix is faced with some truly unfair scenarios. Scenarios that would certainly frustrate most people to the point of tears or worse. And somehow, someway, River Phoenix was able to find the perfectly offputting mix between reservation and reality. Never slipping into melodrama, never settling for surface-level acting. I wish I had seen this as a kid alongside Stand By Me, as bleak of a sister film as it is. But then again, the older I get, the more I think I get out of watching Phoenix performances. Even as an adult, you still kind of want to be him or at least be friends with him.

Near the beginning of Running on Empty, directed by Sidney Lumet, written by Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s mom(?), and starring Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti alongside Phoenix, we find out that Phoenix’s 17-year-old character, Danny, is son to two former post-Vietnam radicals who bombed a napalm lab on US soil in protest of the war. A janitor inside was nearly killed, and the family has been on the run as a result since just after Danny was born. With one little brother, and surely a heap of stuffed-down frustration, Danny moves with his family from town to town whenever the FBI closes in on them. They’re all over the TV, having to change their hair and names as they change locations. Never allowed to make too good of friends or, in a very slyly affecting detail, never allowed to take school pictures. They have to be absent that day.

Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti, playing the parents, are as perfectly cast as Phoenix is. As they slowly watch their eldest son become his own person, we watch them try their hardest not to unravel. This family is all they have had since they made that life-altering mistake so many years ago. They begin to realize that they are inadvertently keeping Danny captive. He’s a talented piano player with a scholarship opportunity to Juilliard and a new girlfriend that he is discovering he loves. It’s technically melodrama but never feels poured on, despite the overbearing Tony Mottola score’s best efforts.

Lumet directs everyone low-key. It’s a quiet movie that really just wants to take the time to put you in each character’s shoes and make you sweat like they must be sweating. It does a lot of showing and not very much telling, and River Phoenix could have won an Oscar if he hadn’t run into Kevin Kline’s Fish Called Wanda buzzsaw. Even when Phoenix is asked to deliver the Oscar reel speeches, however, he’s able to dial them down to uncomfortably honest confessions opposed to the gratuitous declarations that would be in so many worse movies. It’s a real tightrope act that is pulled off in such good taste compared to usual Oscar bait bullshit.

Seriously, if you haven’t seen a River Phoenix movie, go watch Stand By Me. Or Running on Empty. Or The Mosquito Coast. Or Sneakers. Even the opening 15 minutes of The Last Crusade are some of the most amazing work you’ll see by a kid actor in a movie. To emulate Harrison Ford with such accuracy in his most iconic role is an impressive, impressive(!) beat, and it makes me happy to think that somewhere out there, in a better universe where Phoenix doesn’t meet a tragic end, he goes on to star in a few more Indiana Jones movies, maybe even taking the mantle from Ford. It would have worked.

River Phoenix was an enigma to watch. You couldn’t figure out if you wanted to jump in the movie and hang out with him or just continue observing from a distance in awe. He was that compelling and unique to witness. Without a single hint of pretension, he slipped into some of the most believable young male parts of the ‘80s, and did it while being unafraid to show a delicate sensitivity that I am sure was not always met with warmth by peers in those decades. He still deserves the same amount of praise for that today. No one has really replicated it since.

7.75/10