Alerted by a movie talk forum to the glories of Running Scared, I moved the disc to the head of the queue. Then I popped it into the DVD tray without even looking at the box, so I viewed it with only the knowledge that it was an urban crime film of exceeding violence starring Paul Walker; no director or writer research, no awareness of the other cast members.

From this virgin vantage, Running Scared quickly revealed itself to be a criminal version of Kurosawa’s Stray Dog. It’s about a guy trying to get back a gun. I hesitate to go into too much detail about the plot, so let me first say this about the film. It is great. If you haven’t heard of it, and you like visually stylish urban crime thrillers with a twist, go out and rent or buy this film now.

 

 

That being said, the movie focuses on one Joey Gazelle (Walker). He’s a minor level enforcer for a NY or Jersey mobster while also maintaining a family, consisting of wife Teresa (Mimi Rogers look-alike Vera Farmiga), a son, disabled father, and most of the time the abused Russian kid Oleg (Cameron Bright from Birth) from next door. The film opens violently, as Joey finds himself in the middle of a drug deal gone bad, in that it’s raided at mid-point by a third group. Soon it devolves into one of those Tarantino-popularized mass shoot-outs where only a few get out alive. In this case it is Joey and his boss Tommy “Tombs” Perello (Johnny Messner, from the short lived Fox show Killer Instinct), who at one point shoots an opponent right in the crotch. This is the kind of pulp product where anything can happen and life is cheap. If you have ever read Raoul Whitfield’s Green Ice you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s one of the most violent scenes you’re likely to see in an R rated movie, and the film doesn’t stop there. Children are imperiled and see terrible things; human life is cheap; the city is an evil place and even “good” places like diners play host to bad scenes.

 

 

Frankly, part of me knows that this film is gross, excessive, and ludicrous. I also know that Running Scared (New Line, 2006, 122 minutes, color, NR, 2.40:1 enhanced, English, DTS 6.1 ES, Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo with English and Spanish subtitles, 20 minute making of, director commentary track, two storyboarded sequences, the trailer, additional trailers, and CD-ROM features, static musical menu with 22-chapter scene selection, 28-page insert with comic book version of a scene, one disc, keep case, $27.98, released on Tuesday, June 6, 2006) is the kind of film I like. In fact, it got me so excited that I watched a bunch of other similar films afterwards — The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Eyewitness, Way of the Gun — instead of absorbing the disc’s multiple extras or watching any of the other DVDs I’m behind on. I also know that the plot of RS gets crazier and more unpredictable, capping it off with a serious detour into a pedophile ring, and has an ending in which practically everything happens at once. Still, I loved it, partially because of the intensity of Walker and the rest of the cast’s performances, and partially because of its visual creativity.

 

 

I watched the movie shortly after reading Ron Rosenbaum’s impassioned defense of Tony Scott in the New York Observer (no longer on line for free), and there is something of a Tony Scott feel to the film, which was directed, I learned at the end credits, by Wayne Kramer, who did The Cooler (the film was also co-produced by Brett Ratner). The film has other influences, intentional or not. There is a bit of Little Odessa, a smidge of Donnie Brasco, and The Cowboys is referred to explicitly when John Wayne buff Anzor (Karel Roden) strips off his shirt and is shot in the back where a Wayne image is tattooed (two of the bullets go right through Wayne’s eyes). To top it all off, I was surprised to learn that the film was shot in Prague, standing in for Newark. It’s so convincing (maybe it was all those wire fences) forum poster Bob Cashill was inspired to call Prague “the Lon Chaney of cities.”

 

 

Running Scared impresses but not so much for its violence which, after the opening scene, is fairly conventional, though of a quality increasingly rare in milquetoast Hollywood product. No, it’s not so much the violence as the intensity of the world portrayed, in which there at first appears to be no moral compass. Take the scene with Dez and Edele (Bruce Altman and Elizabeth Mitchell), the outlandish pedophiles for whom the whole movie makes a complete stop so as to explore their bizarre world and to dispense upon them street justice. A more traditionally plotted film would have dispensed with the passage (it would appear only as a deleted scene on the disc). And the sequence raises more questions than it offers satisfying revenge. How does the person who blows them away think it is a crime with a free pass, given the ‘phone calls and other evidence that would lead right to the killer? On the other hand, the exaggerated kids playground in which the couple dwell is another example of the fairy tale components that Kramer has inserted into the movie. The film works on three levels: hard edged thriller, fairy tale allegory, and visual storytelling. One question I had after the disc was done, however, went right to the heart of the film. Why is Joey so hot to find the gun? It makes sense at the start of the film, but as the narrative progresses and we learn more about Joey, it ceases to be a logical engine for the whole movie. You’ll see what I mean when you watch it. But don’t let that damper your pleasure in Running Scared.

 

 

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