Run

Scot­tish writer/​director Scott Gra­ham reg­u­lar­ly explores iso­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ties in the fur­thest reach­es of Scot­land. His third fea­ture, Run, advances his explo­rations of fam­i­ly and regret to Fraser­burgh in the far north­east, a small town where the fish­ing indus­try dom­i­nates. Thir­tysome­thing Finnie (Mark Stan­ley), a fish fac­to­ry work­er, has a malaise that’s sab­o­tag­ing his rela­tion­ships with teenage-sweet­heart-turned-wife, Katie (Amy Man­son), and their two sons.

He lingers on mem­o­ries of bygone, care­free nights spent rac­ing cars, and the once bound­less pos­si­bil­i­ties that dried up once the cou­ple took on too much respon­si­bil­i­ty too young. He sees a sim­i­lar fate befalling his teenage eldest, Kid (Anders Hay­ward), who par­takes in the same drag race cul­ture and whose girl­friend, Kel­ly (Mar­li Siu), is pregnant.

Fol­low­ing a fraught evening, Finnie sneaks out, swip­ing Kid’s souped-up car for a joyride that may see him flee Fraser­burgh for an unknown future. Com­pli­ca­tions arise when Kel­ly ends up as his pas­sen­ger com­pan­ion, with a sim­i­lar urge to escape a life of already ham­pered hopes.

There are sev­er­al visu­al and aur­al nods to Bruce Spring­steen, but the over­all ener­gy and direc­tion of Run is less lit­er­al-mind­ed than it may sound. The cen­tral bulk of the sto­ry is an emo­tion­al­ly com­pli­cat­ed, large­ly car-con­fined two-han­der between the mag­net­ic Stan­ley and Siu, with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Simon Tin­dall mak­ing intox­i­cat­ing use of neon reflec­tions and rain and wave-soaked scenery. This sec­tion aes­thet­i­cal­ly resem­bles car-bound Tom Hardy vehi­cle Locke as fil­tered through a rac­ing film.

Under 80 min­utes in length, Run’s tight, tex­tured nar­ra­tive makes the inher­ent lim­i­ta­tions of the few British attempts at road movies part of its the­mat­ic meat: the open road will always still be pret­ty short.