The old, old story retold as a 15-year-old escapes from an abusive stepfather to find herself on the streets in Miami, ping-ponging between a nice lady cop and a nasty pony-tailed pimp as she discovers life as a teenage prostitute isn't a barrel of laughs after all.
Although it has some bad language, the low sex and violence quotient is reminiscent of a TV production, while the thuddingly obvious plot twists are liable to prove a sore temptation to those with itchy fast-forward fingers. Runaway Dreams is dark film, it attempts to be moving at times but never manages to be emotionally engaging. The best performance comes from Kathryn Erbe who plays, the girls sister.
It was written by British playwright/screenwriter John Hopkins who gave us Smiley's People and Hiroshima so it does have a feeling that he was going for a deconstructed look at the underbelly of society. But sadly this is not even close to being fulfilled and the clichéd narrative offers us nothing new.