"Running on Empty" is a brilliant movie, a gripping story that works on many levels.

Hirsch as a '60s radical is hard to swallow. He looks and moves more like a professor of American political history than someone who made history.

Its essential generosity is its most laudable aspect: its sympathy for the idealism of antiwar radicals seems like the real thing.

Running on Empty is as earnest as they come, delving with ostensible sincerity into the spirit, if not the substance, of the ’60s.