Mar­tin Brest’s Mid­night Run is an appeal­ingly loose com­edy built on a solid premise. It’s a clas­sic, almost clichéd Hol­ly­wood sce­nario: Jack Walsh (Robert De Niro) is one of the world’s last hon­est cops, rewarded for his integrity by divorce and demo­tion to the humil­i­at­ing (and dan­ger­ous) level of bounty hunter. His han­dler Eddie Moscone (Joe “Joey Pants” Pan­to­liano) raises the lucra­tive prospect of One Last Job: to escort chief wit­ness Jonathan Mar­dukas (Charles Grodin) in a fed­eral mob case across the coun­try, pur­sued both by the feds (led by the impos­ing and per­pet­u­ally aggrieved Yaphet Kotto) and the mob (the age­less Den­nis Farina) alike.

It’s for you

Walsh has per­sonal busi­ness with mob boss Ser­rano, and so the task quickly becomes a jour­ney of the soul for him. The tem­plate is 3:10 to Yuma: an intel­li­gent, artic­u­late “bad guy” trav­els with gruff and seri­ous “good guy” with money prob­lems and deep-seated resent­ment for being pun­ished for his hon­esty. But all this is beside the point. The true plea­sure of the movie, and the cause of its con­tin­ued cult appeal, is all in the actors’ inter­play. Grodin has all the hilar­i­ous dia­log, much of it with the feel of impro­vi­sa­tion. In con­trast, De Niro seems only equipped to con­tin­u­ally retort with “Shut the fuck up,” per­haps by choice to be true to his char­ac­ter as opposed to a fail­ure of cre­ativ­ity. Why has Grodin been in so few movies?

Yaphet Kotto does not suf­fer fools lightly

Also of inter­est is an early score by Danny Elf­man, later to gain a rep­u­ta­tion for whim­si­cal fan­tasy music for Tim Bur­ton and The Simp­sons. Brest, the direc­tor of Bev­erly Hills Cop, stages a mas­sive multi-car chase approach­ing the absurdly funny lev­els of The Blues Brothers.

Mid­night Run is actu­ally not all that funny a com­edy, not that thrilling a thriller, nor that pen­e­trat­ing a char­ac­ter study. But it is nev­er­the­less great fun to watch, and cry­ing out for a sequel.

Must read: the orig­i­nal Mid­night Run shoot­ing script

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

• 

Related Posts:

1. 
   You Kill Me
2. 
   Tar­na­tion
3. 
   The Illu­sion­ist
4. 
   Né le dis à per­sonne (Tell No One)
5. 
   Burn After Reading