If you needed more proof that the world of filmmaking contains more swings and roundabouts than a playground the size of Erith, all you need to do is sneak a peak at the career of author Michael Crichton. On one hand, the insanely successful scribbler has had many, many movies made from his extensive back catalogue that’s not only made billions of dollars, but it also helped birth a legitimate phenomenon into the public consciousness by being the man who originally welcomed us to Jurassic Park.
On the other hand, he’s the man who also directed a film about Tom Selleck fighting robots the size of a hat box…
The weird thing was, this wasn’t even Crichton’s first stint in the director’s chair, having already made a scattering of movies that included the high concept Westworld back in 1973. But while Runaway isn’t as much as a disaster as, say, Stephen King directing Maximum Overdrive with enough drugs in him to knock out a bear, you still have to wonder how a film than includes “battles robots” in the synopsis could be so flat.
It’s 1991 – apparently – and robots are a fairly commonplace sight in the homes of America as they cook, clean, or even engage in framework and security in mankind’s ceaseless efforts to shove a workload onto something else. However, whenever one of these robots go haywire, you do you think they call? No, not the manufacturer – although that would make much more sense – no, they call the “runaway” squad, a police taskforce specializing in nulifying rogue tech. Headed up by obsessive hero type, Sgt. Jack Ramsay, who joined thanks to an onset of chronic vertigo, he breaks in new partner, Karen Thompson, as they receive an alarming call.
Having to deal with the first, robot-caused homicide when a homecare model suddenly goes nuts, gets it claw on a 35. Magnum and shoots up the place, Ramsey soon realises something sinister is amiss that has something to do with the cartoonishly sociopathic Dr. Charles Luther who is in the midst of carrying out a dastardly plan.
It seems that Luther has manufactured a bunch of master chips that can override a robots safety features which he hopes to sell on the black market and make a bundle, but first he needs to eliminate his various partners though a bunch of grisly means.
Whether assassinating people with his nifty acid injecting, exploding robot spiders, or shooting at them with smart bullets that go round corners, the last person he needs to take out his his former lover, Jackie Rogers – but when Ramsay strides into the lunatic’s crosshairs, all this robot-themed rambunctiousness gets incredibly personal.
While the thought of Tom Selleck heading up a police unit that takes out marauding mechanoids sounds like a sure-fire recipe for 80s awesomeness (Magnum A.I., anyone?), the reality proves to a bit more disappointing as Runaway doesn’t really get behind its magnificently pulpy premise. Crichton initially chooses to approach the notion of a police department with a fairly realistic approach, interestingly keeping the technology fairly consistent with what you’d expect from the early nineties – not that we had box-shaped ‘bots making us scrambled eggs back in those days. However, while the fact that the film eschews the hokey sight of actors dressed as automatons like C-3P0 shuffling around the house with a dust pan and brush, the use of more accurate machines – even ones waving around handguns – don’t particularly result in a tangible threat. While Selleck and the cast try their best to convince us that a toaster-sized appliance could be so dangerous (bearing in mind that one has never actually killed anyone until now), you just can’t shake the feeling that these things could be disabled with one swift kick. Imagine a roomba coming at you with an electric carving knife cello taped to it – hardly an image that prickles your brow with sweat, is it?
Maybe matters might have been enlivened if Selkeck had been allowed to bring the breezy charm he brought to his famous, Hawaiian-based detective, butcaside from that iconic, manly, cookie duster he proudly wears atop his upper lip, Ramasy proves to be something of a wet fish, living up to many, gloomy movie cop tropes he might as well be an unimaginative sci-fi variation of Dirty Harry (Dirty Hard Drive?). It also doesn’t help that, homicides notwithstanding, the runaway division just seems like a glorified, less dangerous, version of animal control who mostly have to flip an off switch rather than wrestle an entaged pitbull into submission.
However, swooping in to add a much-needed sense of absurd to the rather po-faced proceedings is a hilariously unsubtle bad guy performance by none other than Kiss bassist and co-lead singer, Gene Simmons who drops the face paint, gargantuan platforms and fire blowing for something only slightly less flamboyant. Striding throughout proceedings giving literally everyone and everything the glaring stink-eye while sneering like a wild animal, you won’t believe for a single second that this guy could hold down a job as a scientist, but you will believe this guy would annihilate his own mother to get what he wants. It also helps that he’s got quite the bizarre arsenal to back him up which consistently delivers Runaway’s most memorable moments as his heat seeking bullets scream after their targets like a ‘roided up Sam Raimi POV shot and little mouse-bots act like mobile IEDs as they weave in and out of traffic to blow up their prey. However, the coolest – and by far the most illogical – tool at Luther’s disposal are those nasty little robot spider assassins that move like the most lethal wind-up toys you’ve ever fucking seen as they caused a fair few childhood traumas as they jab their poison needles into victim’s neck before exploding into sparks.
It’s an injection of goofy pulp the movie desperately needs more of and it’s far more fun compared to the subplot of Ramsey deliberating who out of Kirsty Alley’s panicked witness or Cynthia Rhodes’ plucky partner he should be pursuing romantically and if Crichton had had more fun with his flawed tale, it could have been a far cooler experience.
As it stands, the film endures more as a cult oddity that now entertains purely for the fact that it’s just such an oddity – but for a movie that has Magnum P.I. trying to save Rebecca from Cheers from assassin-bots sent by the guy who co-sung Detroit Rock City, it should really have let its crazier aspects Runaway with it.
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