Running Scared

[WorthyStevens]

I heard this movie sucked.

 

[Advanced Dark]

^ Thanks for sharing what you heard. LOL It was a fun action packed movie. Some people can never have fun in the movies. They have to over analyze everything. They can't just sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. Instead they complain. These type of movies aren't looking for Oscars, they're not trying to attract Shakespearean actors for every role. They're just meant for escapism. Now escapism can be done poorly or it can be just fun. This to me was extremely intense but like a very wild thrill ride. I don't give a **** if his accent is off.

 

[hitmanyr2k]

This movie is sitting at home right now waiting for me to watch it. I may give a spin tonight.

 

[Advanced Dark]

It's like Man on Fire meets Blue Velvet. I enjoyed the ride. Hope you do.

 

[Carter]

I just wanna know what the hell was up with that monster shadow.

haha you and me both

 

[The Apatow Crew]

I liked this movie and it's one of those movies that some times go to far and thats whats good about it.

 

[Advanced Dark]

^ Exactly. Kind of like True Romance. Not as "fun" as True Romance but way more intense and much more disturbing and twisted. I really enjoyed it.

 

[The Chairman]

^ Exactly. Kind of like True Romance. Not as "fun" as True Romance but way more intense and much more disturbing and twisted. I really enjoyed it.

I haven't seen Running Scared at all, mostly because it looked like **** and I hate Paul Walker, but I highly doubt it's any wya comparable to the masterpiece that is True Romance.

True Romance not intense, disturbing and twisted? You're wrong.

 

[jaguarr]

You lost me at "Paul Walker".

jag

 

[Advanced Dark]

I haven't seen Running Scared at all, mostly because it looked like **** and I hate Paul Walker, but I highly doubt it's any wya comparable to the masterpiece that is True Romance.

True Romance not intense, disturbing and twisted? You're wrong.

Where did I say True Romance was not intense, disturbing or twisted? Did you not read my first post. I don't like Paul Walker either and I really didn't want to see this film but something kept drawing me to it. So I rented it. Until you see it...don't judge it. And it is worthy of comparing to True Romance because Kramer directs almost exactly like Tony Scott however he's twisted like Lynch. Much much much more twisted and much much much more disturbing than True Romance. I'm not saying it's a better film. I clearly stated True Romance was more fun. However if you want to take a strange, violent, twisted, hard-core action ride...rent it. Until then your opinion is worthless.

No the film wasn't praised by great reviews...it's not that kind of film but this review sums it up.

Existing in an elongated state of heightened panic, Running Scared may be the first original screenplay that unfolds in a setting so grim, despairing and yet slightly hallucinatory that it could’ve been adapted from a Grand Theft Auto-type videogame. (This is no small irony, given the noted marketing success of the attendant website’s role-playing spin-off.) Full of crazy implausibilities, it is, in short, just weird.

And yet, unlike something like Tony Scott’s boisterous, equally charged Domino, it never comes off as all *********ory aggrandizement merely for attention’s sake.

Paul Walker stars as Joey Gazelle, a low-level employee of the New Jersey Mafioso Perello family. Following the shooting of a dirty cop in a bungled drug buy that opens the movie, he takes possession of the incriminating gun, under explicit instructions to get rid of it. Before he can, however, his young son’s best friend, Oleg (Birth’s Cameron Bright), finds and takes the firearm, and shoots and wounds his abusive stepfather Anzor (Karel Roden), the drug-addicted black sheep of a rival Russian criminal syndicate.

Determined to find the weapon before the Russians, his own increasingly suspicious cohorts and the police - embodied by the corrupt Detective Rydell (Chazz Palminteri) - Joey plunges into the night to search for Oleg, with his son Nicky (Alex Neuberger) in tow. While he vainly seeks safe haven, meanwhile, Oleg encounters a litany of colorful nocturnal miscreants — pimps, ****es, homeless crack addicts and, believe it or not, worse.

In case you were wondering, it’s here that Running Scared breaks with its genre forebears and dips into truly zonked-out territory. To say too much would ruin what is probably the most flamboyantly superfluous twist since the serial killer subplot of Malice, but suffice to say that the moral ballast of the film, Joey’s long-suffering wife Teresa (Vera Farmiga, a winner of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Best Actress Prize for Down to the Bone), is called upon to take decisive action of her own. It’s a nice twist in a movie like this, which usually requires little more than its female leads look good


New Line Cinema Photo
The fiery Farmiga (r), with Neuberger

in a thong - which Farmiga also does, incidentally.

Kramer’s style is admittedly a polarizing one, particularly visually, where the movie’s handheld, jitterbug technique will turn some off. But in his willful, wild mash-up of genre elements both pulpy and procedural, he at least finds honest ways to tether his crazy plot elements to some sort of mooring narrative, however objectionable or dubious one might find it. In the press kit and attendant advance interviews for the film, Kramer talks about Running Scared being an adult version of a Grimm’s fairy tale, in that Oleg’s tumultuous journey is akin to Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland.

Usually this sort of thing - this packaged narrative - is transparent, Hollywood-concocted bull*****, but here it actually holds some water, so jointly infused with aggression and dread is the movie. Further, this is especially true with some of the rotating cast of villains, whom we glimpse in rare, necessary occasion in exaggerated fashion, through a child’s point-of-view.

Running Scared is less successful in some of its more traditional plottings. Set in a black-lit ice rink, the final confrontation, in which a captured but cajoling Joey tries to talk his way out of the situation (he does) and avoid getting smashed in the face with a hockey puck (he doesn’t), grasps obviously for a sort of sadistic magnificence out of its reach. The film ends, too, with a half-clever, half-cheap twist that half-heartedly elicits a re-reading of the material, but doesn’t really spark an ah-ha! in viewers.

Still, Running Scared is a movie that sticks with you for a while, a significant measure of success for such a thriller. Love it or hate it, you won’t be bored. And in a film full of things designed to shock you, the most shocking of all may be the fashion in which Kramer entrusts chiseled PG-13 pin-up Walker with a darker, edgier character, and the manner in which the young actor subsequently emerges in a surprising new light.

Could it really be: film critics no longer Running Scared from Paul Walker films? Who would’ve thought…

 

[Advanced Dark]

Also here's Ebert's Review which also sums it up nicely but his review isn't as dead on as the one above. It really is like a freakish Alice in Wonderland at times.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060223/REVIEWS/60222003/1023

 

[The Chairman]

Where did I say True Romance was not intense, disturbing or twisted? Did you not read my first post. I don't like Paul Walker either and I really didn't want to see this film but something kept drawing me to it. So I rented it. Until you see it...don't judge it. And it is worthy of comparing to True Romance because Kramer directs almost exactly like Tony Scott however he's twisted like Lynch. Much much much more twisted and much much much more disturbing than True Romance. I'm not saying it's a better film. I clearly stated True Romance was more fun. However if you want to take a strange, violent, twisted, hard-core action ride...rent it. Until then your opinion is worthless.

No the film wasn't praised by great reviews...it's not that kind of film but this review sums it up.

True Romance was more than just a fun movie. It is one of the most intense, fast paced, most orginal, most well written, acted and directed crime dramas I've ever seen. Oodles and oodles of violence do not make a movie intense and disturbing. It ruins it IMO. It's sad when a film has to make up for its generic and uninteresting storyline with a vat of gore.

True Romance was very violent, but it wasn't OTT and it really helped the movie IMO. I don't see how you cannot be genuinely shocked and disturbed by the intensity of the Gandolfini / Arquette showdown.

 

[Advanced Dark]

Oh boy. Do you not freaking read? What's wrong with you. I wasn't reviewing True Romance I was reviewing Running Scared and comparing it to True Romance because it's the best comparison. True Romance was a better film yes, True Romance was more fun yes...but True Romance has nowhere's near the level of violence and twisted darkness that Running Scared has. That's why True Romance is more fun. Running Scared is 100% non stop tension from start to finish...it's more of a violent thrill ride with no slow turns. There's no let up. Your eyes burn to the damn screen because it never lets up and there's so many twists and turns and freaky characters that make True Romance look soft. I know True Romance is violent, I love that film, I also know it's bloody and twisted at times...but again in that department it doens't hold a candle to Running Scared. Believe me. Now stop trying to make a comparison to a movie you haven't seen.

I'm no Paul Walker fan either but this one was downright hardcore.

 

[The Apatow Crew]

Hey you just gotta face it. some people are so ignorant they won't listen to anything anyone has to say cause a certain person is in that movie. and frankly that's just f***ing stupid if you ask me.

 

[Advanced Dark]

I'm not trying to change anyone's opinion and the dude is reading stuff I didn't write. LOL The fact is he has no opinion cause he never saw it and he arguing about the comparision. LOL However I refuse to rent "Into the Blue" though I have to admit "8 Below" was a bit entertaining.

 

[The Apatow Crew]

I'm not trying to change anyone's opinion and the dude is reading stuff I didn't write. LOL The fact is he has no opinion cause he never saw it and he arguing about the comparision. LOL However I refuse to rent "Into the Blue" though I have to admit "8 Below" was a bit entertaining.

Into the Blue is not what you think itsa good action movie. i showed it to a friend of mine and at the end he said he really liked and and said we he saw the previews he didn't expect much but enjoyed it though. and he's not much of a PW fan.

 

[The Chairman]

Hey you just gotta face it. some people are so ignorant they won't listen to anything anyone has to say cause a certain person is in that movie. and frankly that's just f***ing stupid if you ask me.

I've seen Paul Walker's acting before and he quite simply is one of the worst I've ever seen, behind Ashton Kutcher and Vin Diesel.

 

[Advanced Dark]

Do me us a favor. Go and spend $3 dollars and rent the damn film and watch it. You'll then see why I compared the two even if you don't dig the film the comparisons in style and direction are obvious. It's not a comedy there's not one ounce of humor in this film. It's 100% dark and 100% violent. Period. True Romance had more colorful characters and humor throughout. This one doesnt.

 

[WorthyStevens]

Into the Blue is not what you think itsa good action movie. i showed it to a friend of mine and at the end he said he really liked and and said we he saw the previews he didn't expect much but enjoyed it though. and he's not much of a PW fan.

The only thing I liked about the movie was J. Alb in a bikini. There really wasn't anything else going for it other than that.

 

[The Apatow Crew]

Do me us a favor. Go and spend $3 dollars and rent the damn film and watch it. You'll then see why I compared the two even if you don't dig the film the comparisons in style and direction are obvious. It's not a comedy there's not one ounce of humor in this film. It's 100% dark and 100% violent. Period. True Romance had more colorful characters and humor throughout. This one doesnt.

Don't you get it. he's not gonna rent any movie that has Paul Walker in. Cause he thinks if you've seen one Paul Walker movie you've seen them all.

no it's no use arguing with him over it. its just falling on deaf ears.

 

[Advanced Dark]

got it.

 

[The Apatow Crew]

got it.

yeah hey you think its a good movie and thats all thst should matter to you. like how i think ITTB is a good little action movie.

 

[Advanced Dark]

Word of mouth is what turned me onto to RS. I'll probably catch ITTB on cable.

 

[Kable24]

I watched it the other week and liked bits of it, but on the whole is sucked. Bad writing, bad acting and bad directing equals a bad bad bad movie.

 

[Advanced Dark]

^ What movie are you talking about? RS or ITTB? RS had solid directing and great acting (though Walker was not great), and I loved the style. ITTB...haven't seen it.