Running Scared: Synopsis

For over a decade Joey Gazelle (Paul Walker) has successfully juggled his conflicting roles as both loving family man and a low-level employee of the Italian Perello mob in Grimley, New Jersey. However, when Joey ignores the mob’s explicit instructions to dispose of a gun used in the fatal shooting of a corrupt cop during a bungled drug buy, he unwittingly puts his entire family in immediate danger.

Joey stows this incriminating piece of evidence in his basement for possible future use as collateral against his employers, only to have his son’s best friend, Oleg (Cameron Bright), discover and abscond with the weapon. Unaware that the disappearance of this weapon could jeopardize both Joey and himself, Oleg uses it to wound his abusive stepfather Anzor (Karel Roden), the drug-addicted black sheep of the Russian Yugorsky mob, and then flees into the night. As he vainly seeks safe haven, Oleg encounters and dodges a slew of nocturnal miscreants, all the while being pursued by relentless Perello and Yugorsky henchmen as well as by the nefarious Detective Rydell (Chazz Palminteri), a corrupt cop who is hell-bent on profiting from the missing gun’s potentially disastrous effects on the already uneasy alliance between the rival Perello and Yugorsky clans.

Meanwhile, Joey, hot on Oleg’s trail and aided by both his wife Teresa (Vera Farmiga) and son (Alex Neuberger), has embarked on a frantic night-long search, not only to locate Oleg and the gun, but also to save his own life and street credibility by keeping the gun’s disappearance a secret from both mob factions.