An Ode to Running in the Movies
What makes Harrison Ford such a great cinematic sprinter, and why does Tom Cruise always pump his arms like that?
Dash into the flames. Come windmilling, widemouthed, out of the collapsing ice palace. Fling yourself at the spiky green shins of the monster. Outpace the avalanche. Running in movies is always toward danger or away from it. No one in movies is ever just running.
And like, runs like an equation from the future—which is what she is. Harrison Ford in his prime had a distinctive bowled-over running style: Look at him in , blundering and floundering and grimacing and reeling, an everyman dislodged—as if by an explosion—from the everyday, knocked out of his life, and frowningly, head-buttingly determined to get back in there.
