Many have labeled Running Scared a hard boiled crime film, but the label doesn’t fit. It would be better described as a hyper-kinetic trip through one’s worst nightmares. Not nightmarish, but an unfiltered, wake up drenched in sweat nightmare, the kind that sticks with you for the remainder of your days, where you’re lucky if you only have it once. It not feature a scene where the hero literally wakes up, though the film’s dreamlike quality permeates nearly every frame.
Like a dream, the story makes little practical sense, but manages to click together in the manner only the darkest recesses of the brain can comprehend. The hero (dreamer?) of the film, Joey Gazelle(Paul Walker), finds himself bombarded with off the wall scenarios that link together through his relentless quest for a stolen gun. By the time things have come to a close, Joey has crossed paths with mobsters, Russian psychopaths, pimps, hookers, crooked cops, and a very angry wife, usually with bloody, profane results. I haven’t even mentioned the horrific stopover at the home of loathsome, married child molesters.
Running Scared is a mess, but there exists a surprising method to writer/director Wayne Kramer’s madness. Kramer last directed The Cooler an almost pensive examination of Las Vegas gansters. He must have felt bored with taking it slow, because Running Scared crosses a line that few films are willing to. People’s skulls are vaporized with shotguns, female genitalia make gleeful appearances, and children swear like sailors. At one point, the hero gets held down and tortured by having hockey pucks slammed at his skull, the only lighting being the black lights hanging from the ceiling. Like any good nightmare, the torturers dressed in full hockey garb.
Running Scared’s scattergun methodology ensures a lack of greatness, but won’t be forgotten anytime soon by its audience. Kramer as a director enters Michael Bay territory, orchestrating the ludicrous material by punctuating every scene with a huge exclamation point. Even if one hates the material, how can one hold a grudge against a film with the balls and the confidence to hold a shootout in a black-lit hockey rink? I know I can’t.
3 out of 5
2 comments:
ok, i remembered what exactly i was going to say about this movie.
it is a combination of several others, which is why i think i enjoyed it.
the mexican- mob flunkee screws up a bunch while trying to get a gun. he is smarter than he looks.
out of time- everything goes wrong for a cop, like living in a nightmare (i didn't really like this movie that much)
payback- lots of gratuitous violence. also has an innovative torture scene. ("this little piggy...")
anyway, i liked it. i would probably give payback and the mexican 4 out of 5, out of time would get 3 out of 5, and running scared would get 3.5 out of 5.
If I just had to categorize it, I'd say it was a crime-drama, though the nightmarish quality of it made it stick out for me. Those are pretty good comparisons, all films with similar events and themes, albeit wildly different styles and levels of quality.
If we were just gonna talk about mob films, my personal favorite is Casino, which most consider blasphemy. Truth be told, I never worshipped The Godfather films, and Goodfellas was just slightly less interesting than Casino.
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