I've just watched a reasonable copy of "Runners" on YouTube, with just a few minutes of indistinct dialogue.
Recently Stephen Poliakoff has re-visited the theme of a desperate parent searching for a missing child with a sub-plot in the TV series "Summer of Rockets". In both cases I became a bit impatient with the parent's obsession and the unlikelihood of success, and when the child was finally tracked down it seemed implausible.
As other reviewers have noted, we never learn what prompted an apparently happy Rachel to disappear. Nor do we know who tipped off her father about her whereabouts and why.
Quite a few of the outdoor scenes - such as at stations and in Burlington Arcade - appeared to have been shot with unwitting members of the public rather than extras. This did impart some realism, though in one case a queue of rail passengers were staring at the camera.
Kate Hardie, 14 when the film was released, does very well as Rachel.
As a fan of old black-and-white films featuring London in the 1950s, I was interested to see some familiar 1980s' localities.
