Film review: The Runaways

Film review: The Runaways



Based on singer Cherie Currie's memoir Neon Angel, The Runaways is a pretty good, but maybe slightly cock-eyed account of the birth, life and implosion of the world's first all- women rock band.

Essentially thrown together as a novelty act by the impresario Kim Fowley, The Runaways totally overturned Fowley's expectations of what the band would be by taking the music, the performance, and their careers with deadly seriousness, and emerging as a real- live genuine kick-ass rock band.

With Lita Ford on lead, Joan Jett on rhythm, and Cherie Currie behind the microphone, the band burned bright and fierce for a couple of years in the mid-1970s.

They survived the punk-rock revolution with their credibility intact, and basically changed the image of what a rock band could be for a generation of women just as radically as The Sex Pistols ever did for the working-class lads.

The film The Runaways makes few necessary compressions to the story, but it feels to me that the characters, setting and tone of the film are just about perfect.

There is an authenticity to this film - in the dialogue, the backgrounds, even in the choice of film stock - that sells the story.

Although the script is skewed heavily towards the friendship between Jett and Currie, and pretty much ignores Lita Ford, Sandy West and Jackie Fox, it is still as smart, lean and lovingly crafted a rock biopic as I have seen in ages.

Kristen Stewart takes a break from Twilight's moping depressive and pretty much nails the Joan Jett role.

Dakota Fanning brings plenty of empathy to Cherie Currie and Michael Shannon plays Kim Fowley with a mania and energy that it's impossible not to be drawn to.

Good film. Recommended.

The Runaways
Director: Floria Sigismondi
Starrign: Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning
Rated: R16
Time: 106 minutes