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Making the Band meets To Catch a Predator in The Runaways, the artfully-lewd biopic about the 1970s “jailbait” rockers.
And whether you’re a Twihard or Twihater, the hook is irresistable. Namely, the shrewd casting of a scantily clad Dakota Fanning and a leather-attired Kristen Stewart as coke-snorting, spit-swapping bad girls Cherie Currie and Joan Jett.
What better way to rekindle interest in the salacious origins of hard rock’s first all-girl group? Or, if you’re the formerly wholesome ex-child stars, to swagger into edgy, tainted adulthood?
And swagger — and slink — Stewart and Fanning do in music-video helmer Floria Sigismondi’s feature debut.
Loosely adapted from Currie’s autobiography Neon Angel, The Runaways is coarse, brazen, raucous and kinetic — and bracingly so, for about the first hour.
(Case in point: the movie begins with a blot of menstrual blood. The image — and meaning — couldn’t be any blunter if you stamped an exclamation mark on it instead of a, uh, period. Goodbye, innocence; hello, guitar-fuelled feminist bluster.)
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As for the inevitable criticism — not incorrect — that it’s an exercise in sizzle and shock value over substance, the film makes it clear: so was the band itself. Whatever their musical gifts, the Runaways were as much about sexualized pantomime as songwriting — especially in the view of a scandalized public.
Similarly, the movie’s addictive traction lies not in all the interpersonal conflicts, but in its scintillating depiction of behind-the-scenes depravity and discovery.
Weirdly, though, the screenplay’s emotional anchor isn’t Stewart’s Jett, the rock ruffian who later achieved stardom as a solo act. Instead it’s Fanning’s Currie, the angelic delinquent who became their kittenish pin-up.
Jett’s unyielding ambition may be a driving force, but she’s already fully formed when we meet her: a street-tough scrapper who longs to rock out on an electric guitar just like men do.
Early on, when she pitches her chicks-only vision to slithering music impresario Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon), he doesn’t just embrace it, he infects it. Sifting through the Los Angeles night life like a rapacious Svengali, he soon plucks Currie out of a crowd and creepily recruits her.
Later, with his teen punk harlots sequestered in a trailer, he promptly hammers them — particularly Currie, for whom he conjures the single Cherry Bomb — into fighting shape. At one point, he teaches them how to cope with hecklers by slinging trash at them in mid-performance.
These scenes, however predictable the outcome, are a highlight, thanks to a hellacious performance from scene-stealer Shannon, who similarly hijacked Revolutionary Road from Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.
If only the movie could have at least sustained that level of high-voltage, poisonous fun. However, once the group attains fame and subsequently implodes, the grim clichés mount and the momentum drags.
Admittedly, The Runaways still merits a recommendation as an exhilarating if shallow entertainment. But it’s strange and somewhat disheartening that, in contrast to the wounds felt by so many of the people involved, it doesn’t leave a single scar.
(This film is rated 14A)
kevin.williamson@sunmedia.ca