Pop quiz! When I say Michael Crichton what’s the first movie that comes to mind? Jurassic Park? Nice job! Twister? Not too bad! Sphere? Congo? Now you’re just messing with me. If you did not think of his smashing directorial success Runaway, I wouldn’t be surprised. This is such an old favorite of mine that I’ve never heard anyone else even acknowledge (excepting PBF who probably saw in theaters). A 1984 movie about killer robots? How original! Oh wait. Terminator didn’t have Tom Selleck’s mustache though.
Taking place “in the future” or some weird alt-history 1980s, Tom Selleck’s Jack Ramsey is head of the runaway squad, a group of police who deal with industrial and household robots that misbehave. Things start off rather uneventful until a servant robot decides to dice up two people and hold an infant hostage at gunpoint. Ramsey discovers the robot was purposely tasked to go off the handle by the over-the-top Gene Simmons to eliminate an engineer who developed the computer chips that overrode his robot’s commands. The rest of the story unfolds as Ramsey tries to catch up with Simmons’ Charles Luther to prevent him from producing and using the chips. Now, if this sounds all fancy and technical, it’s really not. The story, also written by Crichton, is actually fairly straight-forward and cliched. You could substitute computer chips for illegal guns, drugs, or Ferbies and have the plot for many scores of other action movies.
Where this film gets it right though is the direction. Sadly, Crichton did not direct too many films, presumably due to churning out a new book every few years. However, the composition of the film and the tension throughout is actually quite good, as long as you can suspend your disbelief of the “cutting edge technology.” Now, its unfair to judge the movie based on the standards of technology today as, similiar to Terminator, the story dealt with the fear of the increasing number of machines taking over for humans and what could happen if things went wrong. While I do not yet have a housekeeper robot who looks like a love child between a college dorm fridge and a boombox, we do have Roombas and unmanned drones and bomb disarming robots. So, while Cameron’s flick dealt with runaway robots on a global level (with the resulting death and destruction), Runaway focuses more on them locally and the havoc only a few rogue machines can do with the wrong Kiss member behind the scenes.
Almost all around, the movie is quite good compared to its relatively cheap 80s counterparts. Acting wise, Selleck and the MIA Cynthia Rhodes share quite a few good moments as they bond throughout the movie (even if Ramsey is the most densest action character in films, she wants to jump your bones!). Simmons is quite over the top in just his facial expressions alone but it works quite well as he comes off as a raving lunatic. Even GW Bailey, channeling Capt. Harris, fits in the ensemble well as the requisite hard-ass captain who wants results and is never happy. Kirstie Alley though? Never been a big fan and she reminded me of her shrill performances in those damn talking kid/dog movies. And for God’s sake, if Joey Cramer’s performance here stayed the same, things are not looking good for a revisit of Flight of the Navigator. The robots are pretty cool even if they do look quite dated. And you can’t beat those spider-ish things! They can scale walls, affix to the ceiling, jump at you, shoot acid in your face, inject you with it and then blow up! That’s bad-ass!
If anything fell flat, it would have to be the music. The normally good Jerry Goldsmith was apparently trying to sound futuristic with the all electrical score but it just further concretes the fact that you are watching a movie at the height of cheese from the decade of hair. And, while it might not be to the fault of the filmmakers, the brick-sized cell phone, the 8-color CRT computer screens, and the “futuristic” Ford Tempo police cars can be distracting if you let them be. But don’t. You’d be doing yourself a disservice. In fact, while we at Movie Scum bemoan the ever increasing tide of remakes, I would not mind a remake of this if only to make the killer robots a bit more close to home to the current century. Runaway certainly is not a perfect movie but with the right combination of makeup free Gene Simmons, Tom Selleck’s mustache, Kirstie Alley’s hair, and “futuristic” killer robots, Runaway is a classic comfort movie.
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