“YOU CAN’T RUN FOREVER” (2024) | Film Review
Reference to Jackie Chan: none available
“Why are you doing this?” – “Does it matter?”
There are movies that make you wish you had a licence to make films. Everyone is allowed to have dreams and fulfil them. But as a viewer, you don’t have to share the same dream. In this case, a pure nightmare of a film.
As a progressive person with a sound mind, you would think that women and men are mostly equal these days. But there is an extreme movement that persuades women that they can do everything just as well as men – and even better. This text is aimed at those disillusioned people. The rest of us can just read along and laugh.
Because YOU CAN’T RUN FOREVER cannot be taken seriously. The film was written by Carolyn Carpenter and Michelle Schumacher, who also directed it and used her husband, Oscar-winning actor J.K. Simmons, in the lead role.
I can really imagine how Mrs Schumacher got bored at home and, as an independent woman, finally wanted to step into her director’s shoes again after seven years. Without further ado, she invites her friend Carolyn Carpenter to write a thriller with her; they last worked together on a short film in 2004.
You can imagine what I’m getting at. Of course, the filth is also produced with Schumacher’s money, because no serious investor wanted to shell out the cash. And poor J.K. Simmons was probably in the uncomfortable situation of a loving husband who wants to support his wife’s dreams but doesn’t want to go broke himself.
And so he plays the role of the murderer WADE, who rides around on his motorbike like Terminator with sunglasses and kills people indiscriminately. Why? Does it matter? This is actually the dialogue that is presented to the viewer as an explanation for the setup. Motives? Oh, water under the bridge, extremists don’t need that, they just need what they think men have always done: Violence, murder, ridiculous dialogue, happy endings.
Congratulations, girls, you’ve done it! You’ve topped the shit that some men have brought to the big screen. The film would have got away with more hidden dislikes if it had been a 10-minute film on YouTube. Within the first five minutes, the entire backstory is explained to you by actors who all look like they want to be part of a toothpaste advert.
Nothing is right here. No story, no real characters, bad dialogue, no common thread, no moral, no sense. And the film isn’t even bad enough to be unintentionally funny. However, it does provide a great template for a Wayans spoof! Any film character who runs away from their murderer at night smiling and listening to loud music on their mobile phone deserves to die in a film. What’s wrong with this generation?
Of course there is a happy ending. The men are dead and the three girls finish off the murderer with their own hands while mum is still heavily pregnant. She’ll probably be a suburban Amazon too. The directing is sub-par, which is best recognised by the scene when the stepdaughter pulls her hair out of her face and over her ears during the most tragic time of her life.
You realise that the story was written by women, because the villain, a man, doesn’t behave like a man. He is a comic figure with no substance, no background. And her strong female lead, a teenager, doesn’t really know whether to flee, scroll on TikTok or give up.
But what does it matter, right? Girls just wanna have fun. Well, men and women look in vain for that here. Hands off such filth! I’m sorry for this rotten egg in J.K. Simmons’ filmography.
Dirty 0 out of 10 stars
Original trailer | “YOU CAN’T RUN FOREVER” (2024)
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