Be scared. Be very scared.
I wish I could say this advice is just for the queasy who can’t handle the frequent, bloody bang-banging of mobster movies. I wish I could say it was solely for those who prefer “What the eff?” and “Darnit!” to phrases more characteristic of mob-language and well-versed in four-letter lingo.
But instead, I must seize the golden, yet admittedly cheesy, opportunity this movie title handed me to issue a Public Service Announcement to all moviegoers – weak-stomached, innocent-mouthed or otherwise – seeking a suspenseful, gut-wrenching mobster flick in line with the genre’s classics:
Be scared. Be very scared. Run from this one as fast as you can.
Running Scared stars Paul Walker as Joey Gazelle, a low-level mobster in charge of disposing of murder weapons used by his gang. After a drug deal gone gruesomely wrong, Joey returns home to stash a .38-caliber gun, which was used to off a dirty cop, in a hidden compartment in his basement. When Joey’s son, 10-year-old Nicky (Alex Neuberger), and his friend, Oleg (Cameron Bright), discover Joey’s hidden stash of weapons, Oleg steals the .38 and uses it to shoot his abusive stepfather. Joey has to track down and reclaim the gun as it switches hands through the city before the murder and the shooting are traced back to his gang – at the cost of his life, of course.
A decent premise, right? But the film’s plot and credibility repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot as Joey and Nicky chase the gun through an overly dramatic, tries-too-hard-to-be-hard world populated solely by pimps, hos, mobsters, corrupt cops, dark corners, strip joints and poorly connected subplots.
We watch pre-pubescent Oleg befriend a prostitute. We witness a run-in with a pair of child molesters so psychotic they neatly hang child-sized body bags in their closet. We see the traumatic result of a freak gas leak, watch Joey’s crew battle members of a Russian mob, witness Joey feign being a doctor and watch him sneak a bullet out of a room in about three seconds by using a piece of chewing gum (how very MacGyver-esque). And I’m not giving anything away – these are solely stitches in the hodgepodge of shock-for-the-sake-of-shock events that makes Running Scared almost laughably outrageous.
But the sanity of the story isn’t the only thing lost in the film’s drama overload. The plot goes in so many directions and the script gets so caught up in being cool there is virtually no character development.
We want to feel something for Oleg, a kid who takes abuse from his stepfather without a flinch, but we can’t when he’s constantly dodging gangsters and taking down pimps. Joey might have been a multidimensional, realistic hero had he had time to say something to his son that didn’t include an obscenity. Joey and his wife Teresa (Vera Famiga, The Manchurian Candidate) could have had a connection, but any potential for their relationship to mature is drowned by cheesy one-liners and perpetual hard-ass attitudes.
Perhaps the most traumatic part of the movie is watching Walker attempt to free himself from the teen-acting trap. Walker’s performances in other films, such as his breakthrough, The Fast and the Furious, were arguably dull and formulaic, leaving those not pleased with plentiful vroom-vrooming and rapper-turned-actor cameos begging Walker to take a role that didn’t just require standing there and looking pretty.
Walker’s part in Running Scared will surprise you – gone are the blonde fluffy locks and coy pick-up lines. Here is a Walker with a shaven head and attitude, with hate and fear in those sparkling blue eyes. The problem isn’t that Walker doesn’t know what makes a hardened character. The problem is he tries too hard to convince us he’s got it.
The mark of a good actor is his ability to be both hard and human, not robotic, to take the role of macho and make it compelling and natural. Walker does neither and ends up putting on a painfully awkward performance, a la Ben Affleck’s hardened-thug stint in the awful-all-over Gigli. A better script may have helped, but so could have realistic facial expressions, human reactions and a multi-tonal voice. Just as wearing a cape doesn’t make you Superman, wearing the mask of mobster doesn’t make you streetworthy.
Other critics have compared Running Scared to Sin City, and with reason: The movie has the perfect, overdramatic characters and dark, violent settings to take on a film-noir vibe. What Running Scared lacks, however, is depth and careful crafting. Sin City has characters we fall in love with. It has stories with meaning. It has relationships we watch blossom and heroes we root for. Running Scared has so much violence for the sake of violence and plot for the sake of plot that it’s nearly tasteless. We see the spark in the characters, we see the heart in the story, but the script and the screen just don’t kindle it into a flame.
Despite the above dogging, the movie has a few qualities that will leave select viewers at least slightly satisfied. Anyone with a respect for cinematography will acknowledge director Wayne Kramer’s unique usage of camera angles, rewind techniques and flicker effects, which emphasize the emotions of the characters and fit well with the movie’s chaotic flavor. If you like blood and guts, you’ll certainly get your fill: The first 15 minutes of the film feature one of the most brutal close-range shootouts of late. And if you don’t like Paul Walker, well, you’ll get to see him get smacked in the mouth with a hockey puck a few times in a nasty lights-out scene at an ice rink. If none of the above appeals to you, I suggest taking that $8 and saving it for a Sin City sequel. At least you’ll get some class for your cash.
Movie: Running Scared | Verdict: C
Contact reporter Raquel Christie at diversions@dbk.umd.edu.
