The promotional material argues that without The Runaways – an all-female, post-glam Californian rock group – no woman would ever have been allowed to take hold of an electric guitar. Well, as Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart), the band’s guitarist, constantly reminds us in Floria Sigismondi’s feature debut, Suzi Quatro had already prepared the ground. So, Hole and L7 might, perhaps, have happened anyway.
At any rate, The Runaways proves to be a perfectly tolerable – if very predictable – entry to the genre of crash-and-burn rock biopic. Beginning in the San Fernando Valley during the dying days of the Ford administration, the movie follows the famously eccentric impresario Kim Fowley (mighty Michael Shannon in second gear) as he happens upon the teenage Jett and warms to her notion of a distaff power combo. Somewhat too hastily, the band find modest success in the US and enormous fame in distant Japan. As is the case in every such film – and, to be fair, too often in real life – the singer allows ego to overpower good sense and cracks begin to develop. Guitarist Jett and warbler Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) are soon clawing out each other’s eyes.
Though decent actresses, Fanning and Stewart are a little underpowered to play aggressive, hip-thrusting rock stars and the film seems somewhat unsure in its period detail. Nonetheless, Sigismondi, hitherto a photographer, does a great job of getting across the sweaty fug that accompanied rock tours in the stretch-nylon years. The music is satisfactorily raw and the camera judders with authentic proto-punk energy. See it with a bottle of Jack Daniels.