Reaction
Running on Empty was released on September 9, 1988 in 22 theaters where it grossed $215,157 on its opening weekend. It went on to make $2.8 million in North America.
Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and called it "one of the best films of the year." In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "The courtship between Danny and Lorna is staged especially disarmingly, with Mr. Phoenix and Miss Plimpton conveying a sweet, serious and believably gradual attraction." Newsweek magazine's David Ansen wrote, "A curious mix of soap opera and social history, Lumet's film shouldn't work, yet its fusion of oddly matched parts proves emotionally overpowering. You have to be pretty tough to resist it." However, Hal Hinson, in his review for the Washington Post wrote, "Running on Empty doesn't make much sense for the title of the movie ... but it does work as a description of the director. Sidney Lumet may be the laziest major director working today."
The film has an 82% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Famous quotes containing the word reaction:
“In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“The excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“Sole and self-commanded works,
Fears not undermining days,
Grows by decays,
And, by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,
Makes flames to freeze, and ice to boil.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)