Runaway (1984) – Review

When it comes to depicting science and technology going horribly awry no one comes close to author Michael Crichton, with such entries like Westworld and Jurassic Park becoming cornerstones of the genre, but in 1984 he helmed a little-known sci-fi flick that pitted Tom Selleck and his trademark moustache against Gene Simmons and an array of pesky robots.

This movie takes place in the near future, and by that they mean 1991, a time and place where robots are commonly used for a variety of tasks from, household chores to industrial labour.  However, when a malfunctioning robot causes a deadly incident at a high-tech company two cops, Sergeant Ramsay (Tom Selleck) and his new partner Karen Thompson (Cynthia Rhodes), are called in to investigate and as our heroes dig deeper into this issue they learn of a new and strange integrated circuit that not only overrides a robot’s safety features but can also direct it to attack humans.  Worst of all is the fact that these circuits were not “hacked chips” but were created from a series of master templates which enables them to be mass-produced, and this leads to the big question “What kind of madman could be behind such a diabolical threat?”

Oh, right, we have Gene Simmons in our cast.

Turns out that a brilliant career criminal named Dr. Charles Luther (Gene Simmons) had developed a program that would allow a robot to thermographically identify a human from amidst cover and to even differentiate between humans and has now teamed up with a few defence contractors, but not one to share potential profits for such a weapon he uses robots altered by this new circuit to kill one of his “partners” and takes another one out with a gun that utilizes smart bullets which capable of locking onto a human target’s unique heat signature.  This is all so that Luther can go off and the sell the technology on the black market unencumbered, unfortunately for Luther, his other partner/love interest Jackie Rogers (Kirstie Alley) is caught with the stolen circuit templates and ends up becoming bait in a cat-and-mouse game between Ramsay and Luther. And if you’ve seen a movie before you can guess how well this goes.

“I’m going to be horribly murdered, aren’t I?”

Does any of this seem plausible, is the science just a little too far out? Never fear, because Selleck’s moustache is so distractingly handsome that it’s hard to focus on anything else. Seriously, that thing deserves its own credit in the movie. It’s a testament to Selleck’s charm that he can make such a ridiculous premise work, even when he’s being chased by robot spiders and dodging laser beams. Speaking of the robots, they’re not exactly the most intimidating villains in cinema history because while they do have sharp claws and can shoot lasers they also move at a snail’s pace and have a tendency to get stuck on things. Watching Tom Selleck and his team of robot-busting cops slowly chase after these clunky machines is both ridiculous and entertaining.

How can Thomas Magnum possibly beat such dangerous foes?

Stray Observations:

• Ramsay’s boss is portrayed by actor G.W. Bailey who in the very same year as this film was released would appear as Lt. Harris in Police Academy, a film with a very different view of law enforcement. Mind you, seeing Steve Gutenberg fighting robots would have also made for an entertaining movie.
• The first “runaway” robot we encounter is a malfunctioning pest control robot that has run amok in a farmer’s field, but is this something that would require the police? I can see the need for a police division to deal with murderous A.I.s and the like but a faulty farming tool, one that hasn’t so much as bruised a person, wouldn’t a call to the manufacturer be more appropriate?
• A news cameraman follows Ramsay into a house where a robot has murdered a family leaving and a ten-month-old baby trapped inside, and I have to ask, “Do the police not stop civilians from wandering into active crime scenes in this future world?”
• We learn that Ramsay used to work the streets as a regular police officer but quit due to his fear of heights, just like Jimmy Stewart’s character in Hitchcock’s Vertigo. I sure hope the final showdown between Ramsey and Luther isn’t somewhere high.

Damn, who could have seen this coming?

Michael Crichton’s Runaway is a sci-fi movie that focuses on the real-world implications of technology and its potential to go awry and the film’s themes are still relevant today, with artificial intelligence and automation becoming more prevalent in our lives  And while his predictions weren’t too far off as such things as domestic robots, video mail, social media, the Internet, voice-activated computers, bio-metric security, camera drones, tablet PCs and wireless headsets are now commonplace, unfortunately, the plot of the film’s villain is rather clichéd and the whole police robotics division wasn’t well concieved and makes very little sense in the context of the world Crichton was trying to build. And when the film reached its “exciting” climax I was left with one final question, “Why wouldn’t Luther have included a fail-safe in his little robot killers that would prevent them from attacking their own creator?”

That does seem to be a significant design flaw.

Overall, Runaway is an enjoyable and suspenseful film that offers a unique twist on the traditional sci-fi genre, with special effects that were fairly impressive for their time and a story that was engaging if not also a bit silly, and it’s certainly something fans of Tom Selleck and sci-fi thrillers should check out, if only to see that moustache in action.