Running on Empty

Arthur and Annie Pope have been living under assumed names for years, moving from town to town with their two sons. In the late 1960s the couple took part in a protest against the Vietnam War by setting fire to a weapons laboratory, an act that has kept the authorities pursuing them ever since. Their eldest son, Danny, now seventeen, has grown tired of the secrecy and constant relocation, all the more so after falling for a girl named Lorna. When his talent at the piano brings an opportunity to study music seriously, he must weigh his own future against the family's need to stay hidden.

Sidney Lumet directed the film, the eighteenth of the twenty-six features he made, following Power and preceding Family Business. Naomi Foner wrote the screenplay, and Griffin Dunne and Amy Robinson produced. Christine Lahti and Judd Hirsch play the parents, with River Phoenix as Danny, Jonas Abry as his younger brother Harry, and Martha Plimpton as Lorna.

Released in September 1988, the film runs 116 minutes. Made for about three million dollars, it took in a similar amount worldwide, a modest return. Audiences rate it well: on IMDb it holds 7.6 out of 10 from roughly twenty thousand votes, and on TMDB 7.4 from several hundred, while the critics' rating stands lower at 6.6 from thirty-one reviews.