Tribeca 2021: No Running Review

This will be one of several reviews from this year’s Tribeca film Festival. To follow our coverage, click here.

Sci-fi films have often served as allegories about issues during the times they were made. However, this presents a fine line were filmmakers must do the message they are trying to present justice while still telling a compelling enough story to sustain that message. That being said, there have been occasions when the latter suffers at the expense of the former. When it comes to No Running, the film while not without problems, just escapes that hurdle by still delivering a somewhat compelling tale that doesn’t offer much more than some lazy and heavy-handed social commentary about race and racial tensions. Running at a mere 82 minutes, that short running time essentially kneecaps the film before it could truly get going but in the end, what makes the film work is a stellar lead performance from Skylan Brooks. It was just a shame that he didn’t get more to work with.

No Running tells the story of a young Black man named Jaylen (Brooks), a high school student who soon falls under suspicion after the mysterious disappearance of one of his classmates. Early on, the film makes it clear that Jaylen is not like everyone else as he and his family were seemingly the only Black people living in their southern small town. Just like real life, the simple fact of being Black seemingly set him back right away in the eyes of the majority of the people around him and the film would not let us forget that throughout in ways that became increasingly ridiculous as the film went on. Despite that overwhelming pressure and scrutiny on him, Jaylen worked to try and clear his name and uncover the truth behind what really happened to his missing classmate and little did he know that that truth was something from out of this world. As he uncovered this truth while the authorities closed in on him, there was still some tension in whether or not he would survive. Nevertheless, Brooks’ charismatic performance as Jaylen pulled audiences into his journey and plight and made us care about him which is needed for a film like this, even if it got ridiculous at times.

At the end of the day, No Running is a decent genre piece that will hit the right spot even if it doesn’t add anything new to the conversation.

still courtesy of Tribeca

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.