Running Scared: Critic Reviews

A giddily awful, awfully giddy action noir.

In the gleefully violent Running Scared, the writer and director Wayne Kramer tries to go over the rainbow and put a self-consciously bloody spin on once upon a time.

No one in their right minds could call this a good film, but it's certainly unique.

A potential howler done in by a tendency to wear too much body tissue on its sleeve.

Everything feels begged, borrowed and stolen from other better movies, from Quentin Tarantino's exclamation-point violence to the slo-mo bullet trajectory shots from The Matrix.

A depressing piece of gun-crazy Hollywood scuzz that, with its gassy style and runaway immorality, makes a Tony Scott movie look like a Robert Bresson picture.

The filmmaker whose work this most resembles is Guy Ritchie, except that Kramer actually seems to be taking himself seriously

This overlong fantasy of urban violence is so far over the top -- you might as well be watching a computer monitor while somebody else has a high time playing the video game Grand Theft Auto.

But even beyond its sleazy pandering and sensationalism, the film's worst transgression is its exploitation of young children.

Running Scared is about as hard an "R" rating as you can get, with buckets of blood, full- frontal nudity and swearing that would peel gum from the sidewalk.

Running Scared goes so far over the top, it circumnavigates the top and doubles back on itself; it's the Mobius Strip of over-the-topness. I am in awe.

There's clearly supposed to be tension between Joey's good and bad sides. Sure, he's a mobster, but he's also a family man, which makes him... gray. (Not black and white = very sophisticated.)

This is the kind of movie where character development consists of a guy mentioning in passing he has a meth lab in his back yard.

An exhilarating bloodbath of a film, Running Scared may not be perfect, but it's got adrenaline, wild eyes and sleaze to spare.

It's like a gruesome merry-go-round filled with unpleasant characters and bad acting.

The end result of all these cross-mob confrontations is an orgy of nihilistic violence that is curiously exhilarating, I am almost ashamed to say.

A ferociously energetic piece of filmmaking, Running Scared makes the seedy Vegas milieu of writer-director Wayne KramerWayne Kramer's first feature, The Cooler, look as tasteful as The Sound of Music.

Kramer seems to be aping Quentin Tarantino's brilliant tangents in Pulp Fiction, but he doesn't have Tarantino's imagination or gift for dialogue.

It's borderline irresponsible, a virtual horror movie of a gangster thriller.

In the opening minutes of Running Scared, a drug deal goes bad and takes the entire movie with it.

Ethnic stereotyping, moral qualms and plot improbabilities aside, you just wish a movie like Running Scared wasn't so anxious to be exciting all the time: It gets so monotonous.

It's lower on the food chain than a mere exploitation picture because it clings so desperately to the notion that it's a serious movie about violence; it doesn't even have enough integrity to serve up cheap, sick thrills for their own sake.

With a complex plot that unspools with surprising clarity, Running Scared displays a reckless intensity.