Critics reviews

It's a film full of bold formal choices and vivid imagery, anchored by a transcendent performance that’s more than deserving of the Oscar speculation it's attracted. Like the winds that batter Orkney, Ronan is a force to be reckoned with.

Whoever turns to this film in hopes of finding answers with regard to addictive behaviour will be met with disappointment, but the plus side of this is that the drama avoids falling into the pitfall of didactics. Completely at ease and harmonising with Rona’s emotional and soul-searching journey, Ronan’s head-first dive into this character is the carthorse of the production. Her performance is spellbinding and invigorating.

Despite the script’s somewhat tricky narrative structure, Ronan is towering in the role, illustrating Rona as a young woman who is ferocious and delicate, vulnerable and strong.

Even at its most sentimental, there’s something bracing about The Outrun’s consistent lean toward the symbolic, even the poetic – in a genre often geared toward strenuous, grimy realism... As an inward study of self-redemption, however, The Outrun has a defiant, angular power – and, in Ronan, the right actor to convey it.

As Rona, Ronan delivers a performance that’s rawer and rougher at the edges than perhaps anything else the actor has done to date, while still retaining that twinkling charisma and elven charm of a figure drawn straight from Scottish folklore.

Saoirse Ronan adds yet another practically perfect performance to her arsenal, next to her remarkable works in titles like Lady Bird, Brooklyn, and Little Women. However, even though the film wouldn’t function without Ronan’s commitment and sensitivity to the work required here, the filmmaking and direction by Nora Fingscheidt take the lead for me as to what makes The Outrun such an abundant experience.

Yet despite the strength of Ronan’s performance, The Outrun struggles to leave a lasting impression, cut from the same cloth as similar dramas. Although Fingscheidt deftly avoids falling into the trap of creating inspirational misery porn, it’s a drama that only paints in broad strokes, and as such fails to stand out in a crowded field.

“The Outrun” is competent and even stylishly made, yet I have to confess: I found the movie overwhelmingly drab. Everything that happens feels specific (at least visually), but also a tad generic. The film leaps around in time, which is all good, yet it never acquires any forward momentum as a narrative. Our empathy, and curiosity, keep crashing up against the rocky shoals of enervation.

With an exceptional performance by Saoirse Ronan and a stunning grasp on interiority and visual poetry, The Outrun is a wonderful feature debut that could have been elevated further by stronger form. Despite its occasional stumbling blocks, the director, who co-wrote the screenplay with Amy Liptrot, the author of the novel the film it's based on, has a clear vision and a good instinct for storytelling.

These structural choices are buoyed by a forceful performance from Ronan, who fully embodies Rona, in all her complexities and messiness... Ronan’s choices are bold, visceral, vulnerable, and devastating. There is no ego in this performance, and the movie is all the better for it.

The film is so constantly jumping around in time that it loses the emotional power it could have had just sketching the development, rehabilitation, and daily battles of alcoholism. Ronan’s performance will keep people engaged, especially those who have fought this disease themselves, because of how truthful it feels, but the film around it feels like it doesn’t trust its leading lady or the audience enough to truly showcase it.

Saoirse Ronan gives one of her most transcendent performances in Nora Fingscheidt’s windswept drama The Outrun... never quite following a clean and steady narrative line, which puts quite a bit of responsibility on Ronan’s performance.