The earnestness drips off Nicolas Cage’s “The Runner” like the sweat of good intentions. But you have to appreciate that rare high-minded effort from an actor who has been frantically collecting paychecks for mostly bad, often lowbrow pictures, for years.
Cage plays a Bayou Congressman trying to get some relief for his Gulf of Mexico constituents, embattled and going under after the BP/Deep Water Horizon oil spill.
An emotional speech earns Colin Price some attention, causing his advisor (Wendell Pierce) to suggest “This speech is going to have legs.”
But is Price ready for his moment in the sun?
Passionate, yes. But a complicated marriage (to Connie Nielsen) of political convenience gets exposed when his affair with a fisherman’s wife becomes public.
“Louisiana has always been one big family,” his politico Dad (Peter Fonda) tells the press. “And we don’t abandon family when they make a mistake.”
But even Colin’s decades of sobriety, his still-beloved-but cynical drunk of a dad and a favorite advisor (Sarah Paulson) cannot save him.
It’s back to local organizing, back to grass roots legal work helping these same embattled fishermen and coastal business women, for Price.
There’s a lot of political double-dealing and romantic finagling and the like, with Cage gamely trying to get across a very flawed man with the best political intentions.
Writer-director Austin Stark’s film crams a lot into 90 minutes, leaving no room for grace notes, little time for the heart that this truncated story cries out for.

MPAA Rating: R for language and some

sexual material

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Connie Nielsen, Sarah

Paulson, Peter Fonda, Wendell Pierce
Credits: Written and directed by Austin

Stark. An Alchemy release. An Alchemy

release.

Running time: 1:30