Run This Town

Inspired by true events, Run This Town follows novice reporter Bram Shriver (Ben Platt) as he attempts to break a major story involving Toronto’s reckless mayor, Rob Ford (Damian Lewis). It’s almost astonishing just how misbegotten and uninvolving Run This Town is virtually from the get-go, as filmmaker Ricky Tollman delivers an opening stretch focused entirely on the exploits of uniformly dull, hopelessly underdeveloped characters – with Platt’s bland turn as the far-from-sympathetic protagonist standing front and center as the movie’s biggest and most egregious deficiency. (There is, ultimately, never a point at which Bram becomes the captivating hero Tollman has surely intended.) There’s little doubt, as well, that Tollman’s reliance on aggressively ostentatious elements, including an obnoxious, nails-on-a-chalkboard score and an exhaustingly frenetic visual sensibility, exacerbates the picture’s less-than-engaging atmosphere, and although certain aspects of the true-life tale are admittedly compelling, Run This Town is focused so little on its presumed subject that such positive attributes are eventually (and inevitably) rendered moot. The final straw comes with the ludicrous, hilariously unconvincing fat suit in which Lewis has been placed, which, although the actor does deliver a surprisingly decent performance, ultimately stands as a thoroughly misguided decision that’s emblematic of everything that’s wrong with Run This Town.

*1/2 out of ****