The Runner

Seems like an effort by Cage to drop a “respectable” entry into his otherwise… eccentric? 2010s run, with middling success – this could have been a low-key Oscar bait candidate if it wasn’t for the fact that Stark’s screenplay feels like two different movies squished together, scoring best in terms of Cage on the idealistic crusader front, charting a simmering outrage over the circumstances around an oil spill, but falling over into the gales of melodrama when a (laughably tame) sex scandal comes to the fore. Overall fine performances keep things watchable, though you could argue Paulson is terribly overqualified to be handed what she has here.