"Freerunner" DVD Review - Written by Scott Sawitz

It must be really tough for a young actor to find a quality project that doesn’t involve either a comic book franchise or something that’ll turn you into an emasculated monster of lore like Twilight did for vampires and The Howling for werewolves. Sean Farris seemed to be on his way to becoming a teen idol after Never Back Down seemed poised to turn he and Cam Gigandet into teen idols. Whereas Gigandet’s career has continued to arc upwards despite being little more than a pretty face, Farris actually has some acting talent and has found himself in a career purgatory of sorts. He’s not quite famous enough to make that leap from burgeoning but barely known talent to known talent with one film and there seemingly isn’t a franchise available that he’s been able to get a role in.

Thus he’s stuck in films like Freerunner .

It has a fairly simple premise. Ryan (Farris) is a competitive free-runner under the thumb of a mobster he’s desperate to get out from. Things go from bad to worse when Mr. Frank (Danny Dyer) and a group of gamblers have decided to make things even more difficult for Ryan and his running friends. Strapping on bombs to their necks, they have an hour to get across town to survive. To make it more interesting Mr. Frank is using it to facilitate gambling between some powerful and rich men who are gambling on all aspects of the race. As Ryan continues to run to keep alive, he tries to get to the bottom of it all and stop Frank from killing him.

And it’s completely rancid.

For all the good the film does, from using first hand perspectives to give you a perspective on the concept of free-running to actually casting a number of professionals, the film is a paint by numbers indie action film filled with the requisite bad acting and clichéd storyline. You can see exactly where this film is going and there’s no pizzazz to it to make it worthwhile. This is a film played relatively straightforward when it needs to go blissfully over the top like Crank; there’s enough going on here, story-wise, that the film demands to be played completely over the top as opposed to being a generic action film. Parts of the film show this tendency but it’s not enough; in the end we’re left with a generic action film with some over the top moments but not enough to make it entertaining.

DVD Extras:

There’s a Blooper Reel and Outtakes, an extended Behind the Scenes piece looking at the film, a brief piece on a game they played on set called “Ninja” to kill time, a brief piece on Free-running/Parkour and the film’s Theatrical trailer.