Run ★★½
A career criminal still imprisoned in Western Australia, Brenden Abbott made headlines in the 1980s and 1990s for robbing banks, successfully living as a fugitive for years, and twice escaping jail when he was caught by police. His infamy was stoked by a pithy nickname: The Postcard Bandit. Abbott supposedly sent law enforcement taunting postcards, but the story was a myth concocted by police. It’s fitting, really. To this day, Abbott’s life and crimes are well-suited to invention.
Brenden Abbott (George Mason) during the Fremantle Prison riot in Run.
Boasting a very clear disclaimer about what “based on a true story” allows for, Run is a six-part drama that attempts to paint a complete portrait of Abbott (George Mason) during his halcyon years. It works, competently and with much invention, as a familiar crime genre piece, but in terms of doing what police across the country tried for years – capturing Brenden Abbott – it falls short. The cops and robbers DNA that fills in the gaps can feel generic, while the psychological portrait is grasping.
The complication for the writing team, headed by Matt Cameron (The Clearing, Prosper), is that simply couching Abbott as a criminal anti-hero is reductive and time-worn. He terrorised hundreds of people at gunpoint during about 50 brazen bank robberies, and Run is rightly at pains to show how that trauma wasn’t always easily shaken. A teller at the very first bank robbery depicted, in Perth’s 1987 suburbs, Nola (Julia Nihill), slowly falls apart in the years after staring down the barrel of a masked Abbott’s gun.
Robyn Malcolm as Brenden’s tough-as-nails-mum Thelma in Run.
There are moments of high adrenaline, including the opening sequence where Abbott sets off a jail riot, but Run is focused on Abbott as a cool professional who is driven but also derailed by personal flaws. He can’t resist the risky association with his boneheaded brother, Glenn (David Howell), yearns to reconnect with the father who abandoned him and tries to control the love of his life, Jackie (Ashleigh Cummings), and subsequently the mother of his child, Lily (Roxie Mohebbi). Is that Brenden Abbott, or is it Don Draper?
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The driven police officer meant to be Abbott’s reflection, Gary Porter (Keiynan Lonsdale), is a cipher for too long, while the storytelling eschews the procedural skills Abbott genuinely possessed. There’s minimal reference to his patient preparation, little detail on how a pre-digital fugitive operated. Repeatedly, Abbott’s professional moves are depicted as rash reactions to personal setbacks – his father won’t see him, so Abbott storms into a bank. The great Robyn Malcolm sharpens her every scene as Abbott’s mother, Thelma, but it’s never clear just who Run is truly pursuing.
Run is now streaming on Binge.
