Runaway (1984 film)

Runaway
Runaway movie poster
Directed by	Michael Crichton
Produced by	Michael I. Rachmil Lisa Faversham (associate producer) Kurt Villadsen (executive producer)
Written by	Michael Crichton
Starring	Tom Selleck Gene Simmons Cynthia Rhodes Kirstie Alley G. W. Bailey
Music by	Jerry Goldsmith
Cinematography	John A. Alonzo
Editing by	James Coblentz
Distributed by	TriStar Pictures
Release date(s)	December 14, 1984
Running time	99 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$6,770,587 (USA)

Runaway is a 1984 science fiction action film starring Tom Selleck, Gene Simmons, Cynthia Rhodes and features Kirstie Alley in one of her early roles. The film was written and directed by Michael Crichton. Jerry Goldsmith composed the original musical score, which was the composer's first all-electronic soundtrack. The film was marketed with the tagline "It is the future. Machines intended to do our work are programmed to turn against us. Someone must stop the madman who started it all." Gene Simmons wrote music for the album Animalize with KISS while participating in this film.^{[citation needed]}

With a multi-million dollar budget, big-name actors and a world-famous author as both writer and director, Runaway was planned as 1984's major science fiction draw. However, it was overshadowed by a low-budget feature, starring B-list actors, and written and directed by an unknown – James Cameron's unprecedented blockbuster, The Terminator. Tom Selleck starred in the film during interseason of Magnum, P.I.

Plot

Typical for Crichton's work, Runaway deals with the devastating and sinister consequences of allowing complex technology to run our lives. The film is set in the near future, where robots are commonplace – as much a part of everyday life as any other electrical appliance. Like other electrical appliances, they are prone to malfunctions. However, when a robot malfunctions, it could pose some form of threat to people and/or property. Such robots are known as "runaways". As runaways are somewhat more dangerous than the average damaged machine, they are not handled by the manufacturers' support personnel but by local divisions of the police force trained in robotics. As the beginning of the film shows, the "runaway" squad, however, is treated as mostly an easy and unexciting assignment, often ridiculed.

Sgt. Jack R. Ramsay (Selleck) is a veteran police officer who joined the runaway squad after discovering his previously unknown acrophobia, which resulted in the death of a family at the hands of a man he let escape. After years on the job, however, Jack has found himself one of the profession's few real experts. His new partner, Karen Thompson (Rhodes), is bright and enthusiastic about the job, but he assures her there is little excitement involved. Mostly all it involves is flipping a switch. This changes when they find themselves handling an unforeseen problem – the first robot facilitated homicide. In the aftermath of dealing with a household robot murdering a family with a kitchen knife and somehow getting access to a handgun, Jack stumbles upon integrated circuits which not only override a robot's safety features, but direct it to attack humans. These devices are discovered to be not hacked chips, but created from a series of master templates, enabling them to be mass-produced.

Despite being unable to learn anything productive from uncooperative informants who end up dead, Ramsay refuses to be deterred, and soon discovers the perpetrator is megalomaniacal and sociopathic genius Dr. Charles Luther (Simmons). Luther, while working for a robotics defense contractor, developed a program that allows a robot to thermographically identify a human form amidst significant cover, and even differentiate between individual humans. Seeing the obvious profit potential in this program, he decided to kill his fellow researchers and sell the technology on the black market. After a botched attempt to arrest Luther, Thompson is left with an unexploded bullet in her arm which Ramsay successfully extracts. Fortunately the attempted arrest reveals information about one of Luther's weapons, smart bullets - miniature heat seeking missiles that lock onto an individual human target's unique heat signature, pursuing them wherever they run, even around corners.

While investigating one of Luther's dead cohorts, Ramsay and Thompson come across Jackie Rogers (Alley), who is found to have once been Luther's lover, and now partner in crime. However, she double-crossed him and stole the circuit templates, intending to sell them herself. But she is scared now because she believes Luther will stop at nothing to kill her, unless he gets the templates. When Ramsay and Thompson create a ruse to transfer Jackie to safety, Luther attacks the police convoy with freeway-running robotic smart bombs. They discover that the bombs are locked in on a bug in Jackie's purse and manage to ditch it before the bombs exploded. Ramsay decides to make a public appearance with Jackie at a restaurant to draw Luther out, but Luther captures Thompson and wants Ramsay to exchange her for Jackie and the templates. Before making the exchange, Jackie tears some of the templates off and hands them to Ramsay, for insurance that Luther won't kill her. But Luther kills her anyway, discovers the template aren't all there, fires some of his smart bullets into the crowded restaurant and flees.

In an attempt to get the missing templates, Luther hatches a plan to attack Ramsay. He enters the police station and uses the computers to discover everything about Ramsay's personal life, including his son. Once Ramsay discovers his personal information has been hacked, he and Thompson race to his home to find his personal robot damaged and his son, Bobby (Cramer), missing. A phone call from Luther confirms he kidnapped Bobby and wants to exchange him for the missing templates. Ramsay then makes a deal with Luther to meet at an unfinished skyscraper for the exchange. Luther gets the templates and sends Ramsay's son down to street level in an elevator, awaited by a legion of assassin robots - spider-like robots no larger than loaves of bread which climb walls and ceilings to reach their targets, murder them by injecting acid into their veins, then explosively self-destruct, leaving no evidence. Thompson, despite agreeing not to interfere, arrives in time and slips past the spiders and helps Bobby stay above the reach of the robots. Luther turns on Ramsay with fury, firing smart bullets, but Ramsay turns on many of the automatic construction equipment, creating multiple heat sources which cause the bullets to miss the mark, and Ramsay uses this to get close to fight with Luther, hand-to-hand. After a pitched fight, Ramsay pushes Luther over the side, and the inventor lands on his back, in the midst of his robot spiders. Programmed to kill whoever came down from above, the robots rush Luther, injecting acid into his body in a dozen places.

Ramsay and Thompson help Bobby down from above, and Ramsay cautiously approaches the seemingly dead body of Luther. Luther reaches up to grab Ramsay and screams, but falls back, dying. Ramsay retreats as fire flares around Luther as the spiders self-destruct. Ramsay and Thompson have a laugh and embrace, kissing.

Main cast

• Tom Selleck - Sgt. Jack R. Ramsay
• Cynthia Rhodes - Karen Thompson
• Gene Simmons - Dr. Charles Luther
• Kirstie Alley - Jackie Rogers
• Stan Shaw - Sgt. Marvin James
• G. W. Bailey - Chief of Police
• Joey Cramer - Bobby Ramsay
• Chris Mulkey - David Johnson
• Anne-Marie Martin - Hooker at Bar
• Michael Paul Chan - Vectrocon Security Guard
• Marilyn Schreffler - Voice of Lois

Reception

The film received mixed reviews. It has received a 47% on Rotten Tomatoes.

See also

• List of American films of 1984

External links

• Runaway at the Internet Movie Database
• Runaway at AllRovi
• Runaway at Rotten Tomatoes