'The Outrun' showcases another superb Saoirse Ronan performance

Noah Fingscheidt's film focuses on the slow burn of addiction recovery.

There’s no glamour on the road back from addiction, whether it be pills or drugs. It’s like a human’s condition became a dirty mirror, and a few sprays of cleaner won’t fix it. For Rona (the incredible Saoirse Ronan), the roadblock is alcohol and the infectious feeling it provides the Orkney Islands native as she forever rebounds from a troubling childhood and complex adult life.

Studio Canal

What The Outrun does well is reveal the long-term process that encapsulates recovery. Adapted from Amy Liptrot’s novel, Noah Fingscheidt’s (who co-wrote the screenplay with Liptrot) film shows there’s no montage out there that can illustrate the steps thoroughly, so you have to take it slow.

It’s amazing what we fail to recognize about addiction and the disease it breeds inside a human soul, something often pawned off as pure choice and nothing else. In reality, it looks like a needle (actual or just figurative) being stuck into someone’s life, slowly draining all the fun and people from it. Rona is gathering what was established before her last plunge into drinking as the movie opens.

The Outrun doesn’t stay in one spot for too long, but I never felt dizzy from the timeline shifting from the present back to one of her bad nights. Ronan infests her with a resilience that can’t be broken down by rejection or a bartender shutting her fun night down. There isn’t a single night that changes Rona’s life, yet a series of foolhardy decisions that cut her down. Without boring down the audience or going too hard into the realities of the road back, Fingscheidt and Ronan bring us in closer.

Alcoholics can’t just blend back into society, because drinking is so heavily promoted that it feels alien to sit in a bar and not participate. A cool and lively person makes a decision to stop ruining her life, and the rest of the world and even her inner circle treat her like a detached retina hanging on in a sea of wide-open judgmental eyes. Empathy can run from a person like Rona, who has reignited her life with purpose, joining a company that utilizes seaweed and other minerals and plants found in the ocean to improve the planet.

For Rona, it’s a mirror to her process--one that can feel like something stuck at the bottom of the ocean and slowly drowning. Ronan makes it all hit hard, and without a lot of effort. She’s got shades of Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Winslet in her emotions and reactions, but it’s her own vessel of creation. You don’t collect four Academy Award nominations before you’re 30 years old by mimicking others. Ronan will definitely be collecting her fifth before birthday #31.

She is incredible, a word often relegated to the few that soar constantly through a film career. Ronan rarely misses, and The Outrun may be the first of her Oscar-nominated movies to solely rely on her. There’s a few nice performances in the movie, but it runs on the lead’s energy and audacity to peel back the layers of a complicated character without a single showy scene.

The lovely and rustic Scotland setting deserves more of a supporting acting nod than any human, surrounding Rona in a cloud of beauty and unlocked potential. A current that rides through the movie is the idea of standing in the middle of a windstorm and simply taking it in. Something that connects Rona to her parents and the madness of her childhood is wind, and how it can feel so powerful and also fleeting.

The Outrun is a potent little indie that doesn’t overstay its welcome or use classic Hollywood methods to tell a story about addiction and recovery, two best friends that never quite sit well with each other but find a way to co-exist eventually. In the end, the movie is further proof that Ronan may not just be Meryl Streep 2.0, but something even more incredible. There’s that word again. Sorry, it’s her fault.

Movie Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Ronan Rating: 5 out of 5