Making a film about the Runaways was an inher­ently risky ven­ture.  First of all, their story was no rags-to-riches fable: the film’s main source, Cherie Currie’s mem­oir Neon Angel, is a grim, despair­ing and fre­quently sor­did cau­tion­ary tale about the per­ils of the rock music busi­ness.  Making an extremely faith­ful ver­sion would be com­pletely uncom­mer­cial but clean­ing it up too much would betray the story.  When the film finally rolled before the cam­eras, it did so with con­tro­ver­sial cast­ing choices and a direc­tor who’d never made a fea­ture.  It was a propo­si­tion full of ques­tion marks.
Thus, it is a relief to report that The Runaways isn’t a dis­as­ter or a betrayal of its sub­ject mat­ter.  In fact, it’s actu­ally pretty good.  It’s nei­ther white­washes nor wal­lows the story’s grue­some details.  Instead, it takes a novel route into the heart of its sub­ject as it deliv­ers the excite­ment and the mood of its era.  The end result isn’t flaw­less but when it con­nects, it con­veys the pas­sion of glam rock/pre-punk era bet­ter than any film since Velvet Goldmine.
The Runaways uses the rise and fall of the title group as the basis for a med­i­ta­tion on that fever­ish time when women were mak­ing their first real strides into the boys’ club of heavy rock.  Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) is a Valley girl who wants to be a female David Bowie and Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) is a butch, independent-minded teen with a burn­ing desire to become a Suzi Quatro-style rock god­dess.  Both are met with resis­tance at all turns but nei­ther can aban­don the fantasy.
Cherie and Joan’s paths cross when scenester/producer/con-artist Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) takes notice of Joan’s femme-band idea and puts the two together with some other girls to hash out a Fowley-led con­cept of what rock­ing women should be.  “The Runaways” is what emerges and, for a short while, it works like a dream.  Things ulti­mately fall apart due to infight­ing, the pres­sures of show­biz and Fowley’s manip­u­la­tions.  The two hero­ines ulti­mately take dif­fer­ent paths out of the band’s wreck­age — but not before they form a bond that tran­scends the may­hem that forged it.
The Runaways has been crit­i­cized in some quar­ters for being too true to famil­iar rock bio con­ceits while also pulling the punches of its real story.  How true either charge is depends on a par­tic­u­lar viewer’s per­spec­tive.  In fair­ness to the crit­ics, writer/director Floria Sigismondi omits cer­tain facts — for instance, the fact that Currie had an abor­tion after an ill-fated affair with a road man­ager or that she did a Fowley-produced solo album after leav­ing the band — and reshuf­fles other details to fit a more con­ven­tional nar­ra­tive struc­ture.  She also indulges her­self with famil­iar scenes like the rise-to-fame mon­tage and the clas­sic “band rehearsal argu­ment that becomes a breakup” scene.
However, The Runaways avoids fic­tion­al­iz­ing the events in favor of syn­the­siz­ing them into a coher­ent pack­age ori­ented around the bond between Currie and Jett.  Sigismondi han­dles their rela­tion­ship with sub­tlety and warmth: even when it briefly dips into roman­tic love, these moments are han­dled with a mature approach to sex­u­al­ity and desire you don’t nor­mally see in a rock movie.  If there is a prob­lem with a story, it’s that the third act suf­fers from some nar­ra­tive drift before end­ing on a strong final scene.  Said third act could have used some tightening/refocusing but it’s never less than watch­able — and the film’s carefully-defined atmos­phere car­ries it throughout.
The film also ben­e­fits from strong per­for­mances across the board.  Stewart is both con­vinc­ing and amaz­ingly nat­ural as Jett, show­ing none of the fussy, Method-style man­ner­isms she is often crit­i­cized for in cer­tain teen-vampire flicks.  Fanning isn’t a per­fect fit for the role of Currie, being a bit more waifish in looks and per­sona than the gen­uine arti­cle, but she over­comes this lim­i­ta­tion with a com­mit­ted per­for­mance and an effec­tive sense of chem­istry with Stewart.  Both also do their own singing and deliver nicely on that front.
The other band­mates have less to do but Scout Taylor-Compton offers a glow­er­ing, unex­pect­edly tough per­for­mance as Lita Ford and Stella Maeve reg­is­ters strongly as earthy, party-hearty drum­mer Sandy West. However, the big scene stealer is Shannon as Kim Fowley.  Everything you’ve heard about his per­fo­mance is true: he’s a ver­i­ta­ble force of nature as he rants, raves, cajoles and brow­beats his young charges down the path to infamy.
Finally, and most impor­tantly, Sigismondi nails the feel of the music and trans­lates its pas­sion and excite­ment into visual terms, thus giv­ing it all a gen­uine vis­ceral punch.  Whether the band is writ­ing “Cherry Bomb” in a dirty trailer or work­ing them­selves into a euphoric frenzy play­ing “Dead End Justice” before a fren­zied crowd, Sigismondi cap­tures the tran­scen­dent power of the music via seamy yet atmos­pheric pho­tog­ra­phy, savvy edit­ing choices and an eye for period detail that sets the scene with­out dom­i­nat­ing it.  Her one-two punch of style and mood smooth over the storyline’s bumps and ensure that The Runaways is a potent voy­age into the female-rocker mystique.