re:mote voices

Title: Running Scared
Cast: Paul Walker, Chazz Palminteri, Wayne Brady, Vera Farmiga, Johnny Messner, Cameron Bright, Shawn Hatosy, Alex Neuberger, Ivana Milicevic, Michael Rappaport
Director: Wayne Kramer

Ah, Paul Walker, now there is casting for you. If you want to make a film that is so bad it is funny, then Paul Walker is your man. Look at the Fast & Furious films, particularly the second one, which is quite hilarious. So what is he doing in Running Scared, the latest film by Wayne Kramer, the man who wrote and directed The Cooler? The Cooler was quite a cool film, a twist on gambling gangsters, a down on his luck man finds some luck kind of deal.

There is no doubt that Running Scared is the performance of Walker's career to date. The film starts with Walker in his boss negotiating a drug deal. Armed and masked men burst in, determined to steal the drugs and the money. But things go wrong and the shooting starts. Walker's boss shoots a couple of the masked men, who are then revealed to be corrupt cops, but cops none the less. Walker is given the gun to dispose of.

Walker takes the gun home, where his son and the kid from next door watch him hide it. Next there is shooting from next door, the kid has stolen the gun, shot his abusive, drunk father, and fled with the gun. The police are already on their way, and this shooting will link to the other shooting. Oh, and the man who was shot was Russian, and has connections to the Russian mob. The rest of the film is a mad dash to track down the gun, keep it out of the wrong hands, and prevent everything crashing down in the worst possible way.

Running Scared is charged. Once it gets going it is pretty non-stop. Effects heavy and over stylized the film spins your head around. A film that becomes increasingly grimy and sinister as it goes on. To a degree there is the aspect of a fable to that, made most explicit from the animated end sequence with a child lost in the woods. The idea seeming to be that The Night is a scary thing and bad things happen in The Night. Though like the use of effects that becomes a little over the top. There are some effects which are nicely used, adding to the atmosphere, but I suspect that the viewer at points becomes so saturated that we stop noticing some of the efforts that are being taken.

Running Scared is like a roller coaster, while you are on it you are all "ooh and ahh". Which is all good and fine, as long as you don't look back at a plastic cart on tracks going exactly where it was always going to go, with flaking paint and a certain shabbiness. The end in particular lets Running Scared down, where it rolls onto that flat track of sad predictability.