We delve into who wrote Run Sweetheart Run and all the other achievements around the person who created it. There are no spoilers.
The movie Run Sweetheart Run premiered on Prime Video on October 28, 2022, over two and a half years after its worldwide premiere during the Sundance Film Festival back in January 2020. The cast is led by Ella Balinska (2019’s Charlie’s Angels and the Resident Evil series) and includes Pilou Asbæk, who people might recognize as Euron Greyjoy from Game of Thrones and who will also be in the upcoming Aquaman and The Lost Kingdom, and Clark Gregg, who played Agent Coulson in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and several MCU movies.
What is Run Sweetheart Run about?
Run Sweetheart Run follows Cherie (Ella Balinska), a single mom who goes on a date with an important client to her firm at her boss’ insistence. He is Ethan (Pilou Asbæk), an influential businessman who is extremely charismatic at first and who enchants Cherie over dinner. At the end of the night, though, when the two are alone together, Ethan reveals his true, violent nature. Cherie quickly runs for her life, kicking off a relentless game of cat-and-mouse as he is chased off by a blood-thirsty assailant.
Who Wrote Run Sweetheart Run?
Three writers worked on Run Sweetheart Run. Director Shana Feste also took on co-writing duties, along with Keith Josef Adkins and Kellee Terrell. Feste, who has been a writer on every project she’s directed, wrote and directed the 2018 film Boundaries, starring Vera Farmiga and Christopher Plummer, before this new horror thriller. Adkins was a story editor on 8 episodes of the ABC legal drama For the People, and a staff writer on 10 episodes of The Good Wife spin-off series, The Good Fight. Terrell only has one additional writing credit on IMDb before Run Sweetheart Run, a 2012 short titled Goodnight My Love.
What else has Shana Feste directed?
Run Sweetheart Run is Shana Feste’s fifth feature directorial effort. Her first feature was the 2009 drama The Greatest, starring Pierce Brosnan, Susan Sarandon, Carey Mulligan, Aaron-Taylor Johnson, Johnny Simmons, and Zoë Kravitz. The film opened to mixed reviews from critics and audiences alike and failed to cross the $1 million mark at the worldwide box office on a $6 million budget. She also directed two music videos by Gwyneth Paltrow, in 2010 and 2011.
Feste followed up The Greatest with the 2010 film Country Song, which had a very poor critical reception, and currently holds a 21% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 135 reviews. The film, which Feste wrote and directed, stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim McGraw, Garrett Hedlund, and Leighton Meester, and follows Hedlund as a rising country-music songwriter who gets involved with Paltrow’s character, a country-music superstar currently in rehab but plotting a comeback along with her manager husband, played by McGraw.
In 2014, Feste came back to the big screen with Endless Love, the first movie she directed that didn’t fully write. Instead, she shared credit with Joshua Safran for the adaptation of Scott Spencer’s novel. The movie was also poorly received, with a 16% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a worldwide box office gross of $35 million, over a $20 million budget. The ensemble includes Alex Pettyfer, Gabriella Wilde, Bruce Greenwood, Joely Richardson, and Robert Patrick. That year, she also co-wrote the script for George C. Wolfe’s You’re Not You, along with Jordan Roberts — the movie currently holds a 48% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes over 23 reviews, though it seems like audiences responded better to it, giving it a 70% rating.
After directing Endless Love, Feste took a four-year hiatus before taking on directing duties again for 2018’s Boundaries. She also wrote that movie, which features a magnificent performance by Christopher Plummer, but did not perform great with critics, according to its 49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Looking at the glass half-full, more than half the audience enjoyed the movie, according to its 56% audience rating.
And that brings us to Run Sweetheart Run.
Have the reviews for Run Sweetheart Run been good or bad?
Mixed, at best. The movie was selected for the 2020 edition of the Sundance Film Festival, but there’s a reason why it’s taken it 2.5 years to find a distributor until Prime Video picked it up. However, it holds the highest critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes of Feste’s career, with 67%, the first time a movie she’s directed gets a fresh rating. However, audiences were not as enthusiastic about it, since only 49% of the (scarce) submitted ratings seemed to enjoy it.
Ready Steady Cut wrote about the movie: “A good film, but it could have been great. It’s got strong performances and an intriguing storyline but leaves too many questions unanswered.”
Screen Rant said: “Run Sweetheart Run has a fierceness to its story that has to be admired, and paired with Ella Balinska’s committed performance, it is a must-watch.”
More negative reviews include The New York Times‘, who wrote: “We get it: The male villain is a stand-in for the patriarchy, and for women, it’s an uphill battle just to survive. No need to bludgeon us over the head with it.”
Similarly, The AV Club said: “Run Sweetheart Run comes from a well-observed point of view that roughly 50% of the world’s population shares. But its singular focus is shortsighted, holding the movie back from delivering effective scares.”
Have you seen Run Sweetheart Run? Are you planning on watching it? Are you a fan of Shana Feste’s work? Let us know in the comments section below!
