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Friday, February 24, 2006
'Running Scared' veers down a muddled path
"Running Scared" kills off half its characters in the first seven minutes and the rest of them in the last half hour. In between, there are a few bonus casualties as a dozen or so lowlifes race around New York City in search of a missing gun.
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View all photosIn the opening bloodbath, a roomful of cops are killed by drug dealers. Joey Gazelle (Paul Walker), whose character is sealed in ambiguity until the end, is responsible for disposing of the guns. That evening, his next-door neighbor, Ivan Yugorsky (Karel Roden), a Russian with a tattoo of John Wayne on his back, is shot by his 10-year-old stepson Oleg (Cameron Bright). The gun happens to have been used in the cop killings, and everyone in town, from Chazz Palminteri's corrupt detective to David Warshofsky's loathsome pimp, has a personal reason for getting their hands on it.
Although Gazelle has his son, Nicky (Alex Neuberger), in tow through most of the chase, there is no familial bonding. Nicky's primary function is to provide his father with somebody to yell at. Both he and Oleg exist more as punching bags than characters, giving "Running Scared" the distinction of being the first Hollywood action film in which children are brutalized with the same off-hand sadism suffered by the adult characters.
This reaches unpleasant extremes when Oleg falls into the hands of a hypernormal couple who abduct him for use in a child-porn snuff film. This subplot is a cheap device to win sympathy for the bad cops and sleazy criminals who have been butchering each other through the film. Compared to the unspeakable evil of child killers, mere mobsters exude humanity.
Writer/director Wayne Kramer's approach to storytelling is to withhold any information that might give away the plot. The film is a string of violent confrontations between characters whose relationships to each other are unclear. The script is sufficiently littered with vulgarity so the actors have no problem knowing what words to stress in their hysterically delivered line readings.
Kramer shoots every scene, however static, as if it were a car chase. Jim Whitaker's cinematography is a wallow in high-definition grime, suggesting an episode of "Cops" as produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.
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