Running Scared (2006)

"Running Scared is a vicious and brutal B-movie jacked up to hysterical, hallucinatory proportions -- a pulpy, violent action picture that torments the viewer as much as its characters ...

... and I mean that as a compliment."

*** The Miami Herald ***

 

Paul Walker plays Joey Gazelle, a small-time hoodlum who is entrusted with the responsibility of disposing the weapons used in a mob massacre which resulted in the death of many (crooked) cops. For reasons of his own, Joey hides the weapons in his own basement, where they are found by two kids. The kid next door uses one of the guns to shoot his abusive stepfather, a mobster, and this sets up a desperate situation which Joey must deal with. Joey knows that the slugs in the dead cops and the slug in the stepfather can be matched, so he has to run around and tamper with some evidence before everyone else finds out what he already knows. Meanwhile, the boy next door is scared and has run away with the gun, so Joey has get to the gun and the boy before anyone else does. The movie's frenetic pace captures Joey's high-speed quest to outmaneuver the cops and the mob for control of the gun, the slugs, and the boy.

That simple summary doesn't convey much about the film's intrinsic nature. There is nothing in this film which resembles reality, or even approaches it. It is a pulp cinema concoction which exists in its own form of comic book reality. The bad guys are one-dimensional, ugly, and evil beyond redemption. The violence and torture scenes are stylized and over-the-top. The plot twists are improbable and operatic. The cinematography and editing are flamboyant. The plot moves very fast, everything is exaggerated, and the whole adventure plays out like Sin City as remade by Tony Scott.

In general, critics were not very receptive to the film, although there were exceptions. It also failed almost completely at the box office: it had a bad opening week, a massive drop-off in the second week, and virtually nothing thereafter. Despite all those negatives, it has managed to accumulate minor cult status among the fans of pulp cinema.

As the Philadelphia Inquirer noted:

If Running Scared had come out in 1994, before Pulp Fiction, it - and (director Wayne) Kramer - would be hailed as blazingly original. But questions of originality notwithstanding, there's plenty of blazing going on here.

As we say here in Tejas, I kinda liked it my ownself. If you think about the film too much, it may seem juvenile, but isn't that also true of Leon or Pulp Fiction or Sin City? That's the nature of the pulp cinema genre. The way the movie experience actually works in Running Scared is that there really isn't much time to consider analytical matters because the director serves up the action like a boxer using body blows: the strategy is to keep you from catching your breath. It moves fast, it hammers away constantly, it catches your attention early, and it's pumped full of adrenalin. Best of all, it manages to do all that while letting the story and characters breathe a bit. Oh, sure, it's no Cameron Crowe movie in terms of character development, but the lead actors (Paul Walker and Vera Farmiga) manage to make their characters seem enough like flesh-and-blood people that the story seems to have at least some anchor in reality. Although the technique is flashy, I didn't ever get a feeling that the story was taking a back seat to the director's pyrotechnics, unlike Tony Scott's Domino, for example.

It does seem to me that the IMDb score of 7.2 is a tad high, and I can see why some critics disliked it, because it is not a very thoughtful movie and it's all been done before by Richie and Besson and others. On the other hand, I can also see why some younger guys thought it was pretty cool. This isn't the kind of film I would pick out for my own pleasure, but I think it may just hit the spot for you if you like such directors as Quentin Tarantino, Luc Besson, Guy Richie, Tony Scott, and Robert Rodriguez. It's a solid offering among those films for 12-year-old boys of all ages.

• Farmigamania is back! Here's Vera Farmiga, who showed her bum in a thong and the top of her pubic hair.

Vera Farmiga




• And here are some gratuitous strippers who showed everything. My hat's off to the director for adding unnecessary full frontal nudity to a film which was already going to get an R for extreme violence! Take that, MPAA!

Strippers

 

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.

"My Horny Girl Friend"

My Horny Girl Friend (2003) or Big bor yau wat, which actually translates Big Breast Seduction, is a recent Hong Kong comedy that is more sex and nudity than story. The lovely Grace Lam starts a new job, and is ravaged by the boss, who promotes her, and puts her on vacation. She comments that she expected to be taken advantage of on her first day, but didn't think she would have to screw someone so old and fat. She heads to the seashore for vacation, where a sexy lifeguard, thinking she is committing suicide, grabs her. The two fall into the water, and she nearly drowns, as she can't swim. When he rescues her, she decides that she wants him, and enlists in his lifeguard training class, even though she doesn't know how to swim. That is where she encounters her nemesis, in the person of the designated Japanese co-star slut that is always the most naked and is always badly dubbed, Yumi Hirano. Yumi has big tits, and the lifeguard prefers women with good flotation devices, so Grace has her work cut out for her.

She thinks she is having success when she gets a note signed by the lifeguard to meet him that night, but it is actually from Yumi, who, it turns out, is try-sexual (if it is sexual, she will try it) who ties her up and seduces her. Grace sees Yumi with the lifeguard spawning on the beach like grunion, and fantasizes that she is the one. Later, Grace meets the lifeguards friend, also sexy. She plans a sex trap, where the friend will seduce Yumi, she will photograph it and show the tape to the lifeguard. If you guessed that they end up in a three way, you are way ahead of me, and so it goes in a film that is mostly nudity and simulated sex, but has a few bright spots of comedy.

Yumi Hirano shows everything repeatedly. This is the first and probably the last film where we will see Grace Lam's buns. She has always kept her panties on before this film, and has announced that she is getting married and will no longer do film nudity. She has her small but firm breasts with award winning nipples out for much of the film.

IMDb readers say 3.3 based on only 8 votes. This film has very little of the off-beat energy that I so love about Hong Kong cinema in general and Category III in particular, but extra points are awarded for Grace Lam -- she is truly a China doll. We will call the genre couples erotica, and make this a C-.

Grace Lam Yumi Hirano

IPODS NOW COOLER THAN BEER
Coolest Of All: The Beerpod! - According to an annual survey of US college students by Student Monitor of New Jersey, iPods are now more popular than beer. Students were asked to rank a number of items and activities as "in" or "out." 73 percent ranked the iPod as "in," while "drinking beer" came in second with 71 percent. This is only the second time that beer was beaten: "The Internet" was #1 in 1997. But one year later, beer was right back at #1 again.

* That's the thing about beer: you can't keep it from turning into #1.
* Beer is still first: the other 29 percent of the students were too drunk to take the survey.
* I'll believe college students think iPods are cooler than beer when they can get girls to flash their boobs after listening to U2 songs.

SELL SOME POT TO BAIL OUT MOM
"Get The Ot-pay Out Of The Idge-Fray!" - Elaine Baker of Spencer, Iowa, was in jail on charges of possession of methamphetamines and drug paraphernalia and child endangerment. Now, she's facing a new charge of intent to deliver marijuana. Police say she used the jail phone to call her son and ask him to get the pot out of the refrigerator and sell it to get bail money. She apparently didn't realize the jail phone was monitored by the police.

* There was a sign by the phone, but I have a feeling she was too stoned to notice it.
* I've got a feeling the child endangerment charge might stick.