A high-society princeling trying to drown inner demons with drugs by the bucketload: it could have been a role written specifically for Cameron Douglas, son of Michael. But, befitting his newly sober and reformed status, Douglas takes the paternal cop role in The Runner, while French-Finnish actor Edouard Philipponnat (soon to be seen in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon) is a teenage drug-dealing screwup; both give robust performances in this deeply felt but somewhat cumbersome thriller.
It plays a bit like Hamlet, if Hamlet was constantly bumping coke and hawking every substance going around. Gilded high-schooler Aiden (Philipponnat) is busted by the no-nonsense Detective Wall (Douglas), who releases him on the proviso he helps take down a local big-shot dealer. Aiden steers his partner Blake (Nadji Jeter) into inviting the kingpin (Eric Balfour) to the epic party he’s throwing at his mother’s high-spec townhouse, where he has to wear a wire. But Aiden starts to disintegrate under the stress, compulsively reminiscing back to his own Ophelia, doomed first love Layla (Kerri Medders).
