I used to laugh many times when people (around me) ask me : why do you watch this film too much! And the answer i guess was very simple: because it is a spectacular movie! For Example i still remember that i went to the cinema three times to watch Gravity back in 2013, because it was one of those films that really make you feel something. The first time when i watch a film i took a general look at the whole film ( Story line, Characters, music, etc..) and as for the second and third time, i just watch the actors performance( focusing on their faces expression, how they moved, did they delivered what we need to see, to know and hear, etc...) Running On Empty was one of those films that i had to watch three times, because it's a superb one.the story is about a family who are running away from justice after the explosion they made in a laboratory which made a guy blinded and paralyzed, and since then the family go from city to city in order to live.The movie deliver to us a superb performance by all the actors of the film, especially River Phonenix who was nominated for best supporting actor for this brilliant role. and Christine Lahti ( who was nominated for golden globe ). The character Danny which played by Mr, Phonexi is probably one of my all time favorite male characters on the screen, it gave me the same reaction when i first watched James Dean Character in rebel without a cause 1955, and no wonder why so many people considered Phoenix as the next Jame Dean, it is so sad that both of them died too young, almost at the same Age! (Dean at 24 and Phonexi at 23). But both of them gave us a real great performances in a few films.What is amazing about this film is the relation between the family members they really love each other and despite the problem they are living in, they are happy.And you can feel that they are like a one union. Now the most amazing part (or item) of this film was the music which was done by Tony Mottola (which worked also with James Dean in Giant 1956). he really did an amazing job the music is just superb and very touching and i don't know why he didn't get an Oscar nomination for his brilliant work in this film! Lumet also gave us one of his best films especially the way of telling the story of how Danny became a great pianist, we didn't know at the beginning of the film how he learned music, who taught him or from where he got his talent and at the end you knew that it was by his mother when she plays with him ( it really was a cleaver way to show it for the audience) .At the end if you are a big fan of drama and musical films, or even a piano lover, i would highly recommend this for you, because the story is great, the directing is fabulous and the acting is at the top. not to mention the great music, so what can you ask more.

The family is in control of the government, so they incessantly move the place where they live in order to keep their privacy hidden. In accordance with such family issue, their sons are also forced to switch their school one after another, but eventually the parents make a huge decision to set their oldest son free from such struggle. I think especially the beginning of the movie is very impressive. The scene, which the tow boys are desperate for escaping from something, makes you intrigued. Since you have no idea about the circumstance of the family at first, your attention will be drawn by it. Besides, you'll be thrilled by the story despite the fact that it is basically warm family drama. In the light of family drama, it is well-organized enough to move the audience. At the same time, however, it is really like a detective story from the point of the family being chased by the authority. In short, the movie can be highly evaluated from the unique way of editing and the story.

Twenty years after Judd Hirsch and Christine Lahti were involved in the bombing of a factory that produced napalm they are still on the run. It's a way of life to them now, they are paying big time now for their misdeeds that went way beyond protesting the war in Vietnam. They've raised two sons, one they had while fugitives. Now however their way of life is going to have an impact on their older son particularly if he continues with them.Running On Empty is a film that will be particularly poignant for those who came of age in the Sixties. Hirsch and Lahti took action that probably many were tempted, but fortunately did not succumb. There might very well be an interesting back story as to just how the characters that Hirsch and Lahti play came to do what they did. I'm surprised a prequel was never made.But here we're concerned with older son River Phoenix who is a mostly self taught musical prodigy and who gets a chance to get a scholarship to Julliard. But he's going to have problems from Judd Hirsch who does not want to see the family unit broken up. That's important to him because it's all he has because of the life he has to lead. Not to mention having to document Phoenix's educational background which has been spotty and under various aliases. Whenever he abruptly leaves and moves to another school the records are always conveniently lost in a convenient fire. Could never use that excuse now with data now all on computers.In addition to which River's found himself a girlfriend in Martha Plimpton the daughter of the music teacher at his latest high school. Some critical decisions will have to be made by him and by his fugitive family.Running On Empty got two Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay and for Best Supporting Actor for River Phoenix. This was a breakout film for him, it was the first really serious part he ever essayed in his short life. His roles were as juveniles in teen oriented films before were nice and showed his potential. This one was the first that took advantage of said potential.I always thought that River drew from a vagabond background of his own which made Running On Empty so special for him and for us. His parents were children of the Sixties themselves, the tune-in, turn-on, drop out kind of hippies with a Christian flavoring. They were commune dwellers living in various places off the grid. I'm sure that background also prepared for the radically different part he played in My Own Private Idaho.Still for all the acclaim River got my favorite scene in the film and its climax involves Christine Lahti and her father Steven Hill when they reunite surreptitiously in a restaurant where all the pent up feelings on both sides get to hang out. She's come to ask her father to take Phoenix in and pull some strings to get him into Julliard. We're told he has the juice to do it. Hill is also playing with a lot of conflicting emotions, he remembers how his rebellious teen daughter was holding him and his entire generation personally responsible for the Vietnam War.Director Sidney Lumet put together an impressive cast with an array of impressive performances, each player stamping an individual seal on them. Running On Empty is a real classic for the decade it came out and the decade it hearkened back to.

The most unsettling part of the family setting their dog out into the street and telling the children it'll certainly find another home is that the children take it rather well. They've deserted family dogs before. And they've left whole lives behind more times than that. The Popes are a married couple who've been subversive since the '60s, and their children include Danny, a high school senior and has never known any other kind of routine. The Popes were implicated in radical politics.They destroyed a building, and there was a janitor they didn't know would be there. They've been fugitives ever since, switching towns and names, finding jobs that don't draw attention, learning to keep the kids home on picture day. The more they flee yesteryear, the more it's in their mindset. And now time is catching up. What, for instance, is Danny going to do? He is a talented pianist, and through one of his teachers he gains a Juilliard scholarship. But he can't collect it unless he supplies his high school transcripts, which are strewn back along countless towns under countless different names.Judd Hirsch's Arthur Pope has taken an uncompromising position for decades, and he's not prepared to change now. He deems that the family must remain together, must safeguard itself against the world. He has created a stronghold psychology, and Danny shares it. He understands that if he confesses and enrolls at Juilliard, he'll never see his family again. His mother, Christine Lahti's Annie, will be heartbroken. She has been fleeing for ages without lamenting the forfeits she made, but she can't accept the idea that Danny will have to surrender his future, just as she lost hers.Life, for the time being, continues. Danny makes a girlfriend, whose father is conveniently the music teacher. They share secrets, but Danny can't share his biggest one. This is the first time he's had a girlfriend, the first time he's let anyone become this close, and he has to learn to confide without being truthful. Plimpton knows something's off, but not exactly what. The family has outlasted each close shave with the Feds, each question from a loud-mouthed neighbor. But this is an impossible risk, as it derives from within: It's no longer feasible for these people to elude questioning the very practicalities on which they've made their lives.And that questioning causes the movie's emotional pinnacle, when Lahti calls her father and coordinates to meet him for lunch. Long ago, she hurt him irrevocably. She vanished for years. Now she wants her parents to assume Danny, so he can go to music school. She will lose her son, as her father lost her. It's ironic and heartbreaking, and by the end of the scene we have been through a choker. The one scene that doesn't work is the cheesy and lugubrious ensemble dinner scene where everyone breaks out into song. But in either case, Lumet is showing us people who've chosen and are observing the cost, and throughout the film they'll have to reassess their assessments.Lumet was one of America's best directors, and his expertise here is in the way he takes a histrionic plot and makes it truthful by making it exclusive. All of the supporting characters are persuasive, mainly Plimpton and her father. And there are impressive performances in the principal roles. Phoenix largely bears the story. It's about him. Lahti and Hill have that devastating scene together. And Lahti and Hirsch, clustered together in bed, realizing in terror that they may have reached a turning point, are poignant. We see how they've relied on one another.The family is not actually political at all. Politics, interestingly, have been left far behind. That sort of commitment would reveal the Popes. The film is a tender, moving drama in which a choice must be made between staying together or splitting apart and perhaps realizing a long-deferred possibility. The parents never met whatever potential they had, owing to their fugitive life. Now, are they warranted in making their son forsake his own future?