"Running on Empty" is a brilliant movie, a gripping story that works on many levels.

| May 25, 2021

Hirsch as a '60s radical is hard to swallow. He looks and moves more like a professor of American political history than someone who made history.

| Original Score: 5/10 | May 25, 2021

Its essential generosity is its most laudable aspect: its sympathy for the idealism of antiwar radicals seems like the real thing.

| May 25, 2021

The movie has definite flaws, but it is genuinely moving thanks in part to River Phoenix's sensitive performance as the teenage son.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 25, 2021

River Phoenix's solid portrayal lends excellence to the film's generally workmanlike approach to handling a gimmicky plot device.

| Original Score: 5/10 | May 25, 2021

A John Hughes-ish teen drama unaccountably complicated by politics and method acting.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 25, 2021

Despite Lumet's home-spun pincer movement on the espionage/conspiracy genres, cliché still sneaks up and nips the film into submission.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 25, 2021

Sophisticated, uncompromising and refreshingly original, it is one of those rare films which is likely to mean as much to teens as it does to their parents.

| May 25, 2021

Successfully operates on several levels - as study of the primacy of the family unit, an anguished teen romance, a coming-of-age story and a look at what happened to some political radicals a generation later.

| Mar 26, 2009

This is a rites of passage movie with a difference, in that it's politically intelligent and never crass.

| Feb 9, 2006

The actors are often so good that they're able to be real and touching even when the material sounds strained.

| May 20, 2003

These are people who have made a choice and are living with the consequences, and during the course of the film they will have to re-evaluate their decisions.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 7, 1988