The Runaways - Punk Chicks

I was very interested in this film when its release was announced last year, but obviously it was nowhere to be found at any of the local cinemas in Berkshire. 'The Runaways' details the dramatic rise and fall of the all-girl punk band of the same name. Manufactured by sleazy record execs (is there any other kind?) in the mid 1970s as an attempt to tap into a new market, they lived a hectic drug-fuelled life and toured briefly before falling apart in a blaze of Rock 'n Roll clichés.

Kristen Stewart (well-known as 'the chick from Twilight') plays the driving force behind the band, Joan Jett, while Dakota Fanning (I'm not quite sure how to put this without sounding like a pervert - but Fanning has grown up a lot since she starred in the remake of 'War of the Worlds') is Cherie Currie. Jet is depicted as a street kid with a craving to dress in leather and play guitar while Currie is an aimlessly rebellious David Bowie wannabe, plucked out of a crowd at a grungy night club to become the face of the band. The Runaways' producer shamelessly selects Currie for her jail bait appeal, before anyone even asks her if she can sing a note. The band have their first practice in a trailer park before going on to tour various scummy bars in the USA and later Japan before quickly splitting up.

I was worried that the film might try to claim that the Runaways were actually good, or that what they were doing was somehow musically valid. Of course musically they've never made a blip on anyone's radar. I'm glad that the film didn't try that kind of re-writing of music history as it would have devalued the whole thing. Instead we see a story of the band without anything in the way of positive spin. The film focuses on the fact that punk music in general was pretty much rubbish from a pure 'music' point of view, and that everything in that scene has always really been about the look (both for the guys and the girls). There's no real difference between a typical punk band and an all-girl combo who snort cocaine and prance around stage in their pants screaming about hating their parents - it's no more or less musically valid than most of the punk scene.

By the end of the film I wasn't entirely sure what the point was. There was clearly no intent to re-invent rock history, nor was there any real attempt to cast the creation of The Runaways as either a good or bad thing for music, women, the music industry or anyone else you'd care to think of. Perhaps the point was to tell us about the existence of this experiment in manufacturing bands and highlight how the cynical manipulation of musical talent by 'the industry' is no new phenomenon? Maybe we're expected to make our own minds up about whether The Runaways were exploited unfairly, blazed a trail for other young rebellious women or perhaps simply weren’t very good and deserved to fail (although Jett has since had moderate success). Whatever the reason for making this film, it was fairly interesting and reasonably absorbing for its 2 hours runtime. Kristen Stewart was especially good I thought, I expect she'll have a career outside of the Twilight series after all.