An advocate for rape victims is put to the ultimate test—when a local fireman's wife escapes his reign of terror, he confronts her advocate with a violence that turns the counselor into the client.

SYNOPSIS:

Introduction:

In 1990, Jessie Murabito was put on trial for taking her children into the underground to get away from her sexually and physically abusive husband. I organized the support protest for the last day of her trial and met her that day. She had been broken so badly her eyes could barely focus, but she grabbed my hand and held on. I couldn’t look away from her despair, and I couldn’t help her regain custody of her children. Run from Fire is for her.

Film Specs:

Era: Present Day

Location: a small town in Essex County, MA

Budget: Low to Medium

Genre: Crime Thriller

In short: Run from Fire is a feminist thriller that turns the ultra-macho Massachusetts police corruption drama on its head. Think The Departed meets The Accused, or Gone Baby Gone with a female lead running the entire show. The police and fire department are fully corrupt, and the outsider “detective” is the head of the local women’s shelter, who is torn between her vendetta against the man who both victimized her and tortured his wife, a woman she has sworn to protect.

The Story

COLEEN STANLEY, 40’s, (think Rachael Taylor) head of the local women’s center, rushes to the old gas station where MARY RILEY, the wife of the town’s hero fireman, has gone to ground. With her usual calm, Coleen soothes Mary’s terror and packs Mary’s kids into her Prius. She gets them moving through the town streets toward the highway and Boston, where they can disappear into the underground that protects abused women and children. “I’ve been waiting,” Coleen says, “For you to be ready. Are you ready?”

But before they can leave town, TOMMY RILEY, 40’s, handsome and utterly violent, Chris Pine type, leaps into a police car and gets his cousin SEAN, the cop, also 40’s, to help hunt them down. Coleen shoves Mary and the kids down toward the floorboards, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. But at the last moment, not even Officer Sean can justify stopping the head of the battered women’s shelter for no reason, and so Colleen engineers Mary’s scape, thwarting Tommy and his family connections for the first time in the town’s history.

But Tommy’s not a man who takes no. He shows up the next morning at Coleen’s house, slamming his fist against the white wooden door and demanding to speak to her. He tries to charm her, reminding her of their high school connection—in this town everyone goes to the same school, and have known each other’s business forever. Coleen, enraged, starts to film him, and then calls the police. Tommy leaves.

The next night Tommy knocks out the security officer at the women’s shelter offices. Coleen, waits for her boyfriend to come pick her up, but he’s late as usual. Before she can escape the building, Tommy pins her in the stairwell. When she won’t give up his wife’s location, he beats and rapes her. Only Officer Sean’s appearance stops him from finishing the job and killing her.

And then JEREMY WASHINGTON, 35, Jesse Williams type, mixed race, Coleen’s boyfriend, shows up. Sean immediately arrests him, so he watches the ambulance cart Coleen away while he’s put into handcuffs.

Coleen comes to consciousness in the room with SUZANNE, 40’s, an African American no nonsense nurse who was once Coleen’s friend (a more vulnerable Chandra Wilson). Coleen goes hysterical when Sean tries to get a rape kit. Only with Suzanne can she tell the truth, showing her need to cover, to protect Mary and herself—for taking the kids into the underground can be seen as kidnapping.

Over the next weeks, Coleen recovers physically, struggling to her feet, limping around the house, sawing a baseball bat to use as weapon and cane, terrified by every noise, including the sound of Tommy Riley’s truck as it revves outside her window.

She tells Jeremy nothing. Their relationship falters under the pressure of his over-solicitous help and her unexplained bursts of temper and terror. When she agrees, finally, to report, Sean is waiting for her at the station. And when she goes back to work, the building, the stairwell, send her into a sweat of memory.

She studies karate. Buys a gun. Drives by Tommy’s house, the gun in her lap. Considers, plans, considers again. Begins to stalk him.

Tommy, at the same time, grows even more out-of-control. He misses his children, he says. He loves his wife. Where are they, where are they, where are they.

And then one of Tommy’s children calls him.

His wife calls Coleen.

And they both head to Tennessee.

Coleen gets there first, and hides Mary.

Tommy goes ballistic in front of Sean and the Memphis cops. But then he looks down the street, as if he can smell Coleen just by standing there in the dust and the loose trash.

When Coleen goes to fly home, Tommy is waiting for her at the airport, Sean in tow.

They arrest her for kidnapping and cart her back to Massachusetts in handcuffs. She spends every moment alone with Sean frantically trying to convince him that Tommy will kill her. Sean shoves her into the back of his police car. And then proceeds to fight with Tommy about what to do with her.

When they stop at a rest stop, and Tommy throws her to the ground and starts to brutalize her again, Sean pulls his gun and forces his cousin to stop. Tommy wrestles away the gun as Coleen takes Sean’s keys and drives away.

And then Tommy kills Sean.

And begins his last hunt for Coleen.

He finds her in the dark of her own living room, having sex with her boyfriend for the first time since the rape.

Tommy shoots her boyfriend.

And then she kills him.

RUN FROM FIRE