Running Scared: Movie & DVD Review (2006)

Running with scissors

(Originally published 2006)

When it comes right down to it, the new Wayne Kramer movie, "Running Scared," should have been called "Running with Scissors." Not because it's a dangerous movie (it isn't), but because it's a reckless, unthinking movie that quickly impales itself on its own script.

As written by Kramer ("The Cooler"), there is every indication that this ridiculous, overly stylized movie was conceived on the fly. How else do you describe all that follows?

Scenes are stacked against each other so haphazardly, there's the sense that somebody here, perhaps a grip who fit the film's target demographic of angry young men, was cheering from the sidelines, urging Kramer to take the movie into any number of directions, all of which appear to have led it to the place it most belongs--hell.

Boiled to its essence, the film's idiot plot goes like this: Paul Walker is Joey Gazelle--yes, Joey Gazelle--a bargain-basement thug charged by a mid-level mobster to get rid of the gun that was used to mow down several dirty cops in a drug bust gone wrong. If he screws up and that gun somehow gets on the street, people Joey don't want to tangle with could get in the sort of trouble that will leave Joey wishing he'd done the job right.

Knowing this, Joey drives home, where the lighting is grim, the décor is depressing and his wife Teresa (Vera Farmiga) is cooking spaghetti in a thong. Well, that lifts Joey's mood. Roughly, he tries to have sex with her on the washing machine, but since Teresa is having none of it--Joey's ailing father is, after all, only a few steps away, a ribbon of drool unspooling from his mouth--Joey zips up and scrambles into the basement. There, his son, Nicky (Alex Neuberger), and Nicky's friend, Oleg (Cameron Bright), watch him from behind a stack of boxes as he hides the gun.

Since there wouldn't be a movie if the gun didn't go missing, it naturally goes missing right into Oleg's hands. Next door, at home, Oleg does things to his abusive, meth-addicted stepfather, Anzor (Karel Roden), that involve employing the business end of said gun. What spins from this leaves everyone running scared, with Kramer bringing in hilarious pimps who freely call themselves "Mac Daddies," kind-hearted prostitutes who do the right thing when properly lock and loaded, a creepy New Jersey couple who kidnap and kill children in a sleazy child-porn ring, and a hockey game that closes the show as if it were "Holiday on Ice--Gangsta Style."

And that's not even half of it. At my screening, the audience was divided. Eight walked out (one kindly raised a finger to the screen) while others couldn't contain their stunned laughter in the face of such mounting absurdity. "Running Scared" is a terrible, vile little movie, for sure, but it would be remiss to overlook the fact that with it, a new camp classic is born. For fans of those movies, here is your feast. All others should run the other way.

Grade: BOMB