'Running Scared' is a violent assault on the ordinary
Thursday, February 23, 2006
PAUL WALKER PLAYS A LOW-LEVEL NEW JERSEY MOBSTER IN A FILM FROM THE DIRECTOR OF 'THE COOLER'To say that the opening scene of "Running Scared'' is eye-popping would be to sell it short by several exploding body parts. The movie roars at you like a shotgun blast to the face, and not some pansy quail-hunting shotgun, either. When writer-director Wayne Kramer blows a hole in you, it is your expectations that are annihilated, and no apology is required for the guilty pleasure of enjoying it.
''Running Scared'' is a full-throttle assault on the ordinary. It has homicides, suicide, infanticide and Paul Walker's backside. It has a kid with a gun to his head, a kid with a knife to his throat and a kid with suffocating friends. It has pedophilia, coprolalia and Vera Farmiga as mother Teresa Gazelle in thong underwear.
Kramer, who made a stylish debut in 2003 with ``The Cooler,'' has imbued ``Running Scared'' with the look of a graphic novel, and that first scene is so pulpy you can almost see splinters in the grain of the film. It involves a transaction between two groups from the service sector of the New Jersey economy -- one Italian-American, the other Jamaican -- that is interrupted by a third set of entrepreneurs. Their origins are obscured by ski masks, but their business plan is unmistakable.
Drug deals go sour in movies like this one with an invariability that is sadly lacking in the booming American service economy. Kramer employs several low-tech visual effects to create the gritty feel of a drop-a-dime novel, at one point hand-cranking the camera to give the picture the staccato effect of gunshots. In slo-mo, we see a baby blue shotgun shell ejected from its magazine at the same moment a luckless drug dealer is being ejected from this world.
Walker plays Joey Gazelle, a low-level soldier in the Perello crime mob, and after heir-head apparent Tommy Perello (Johnny Messner) uses his silver-plated revolver to go Jackson Pollock on the genitals of one of the interlopers, Joey is ordered to dispose of the gun. Instead, he takes it home, and is observed by his son Nicky (Alex Neuberger) and the sullen neighbor kid, Oleg Yugorsky, hiding it in the basement.
Oleg is played by ubiquitous child star Cameron Bright, who will be seen over the next several weeks in ``UltraViolet'' and ``Thank You for Smoking,'' after taking a bath with Nicole Kidman in ''Birth'' last year. (Makes you wonder what he's got to be so sullen about.) Oleg is being tortured by his stepfather, Anzor (Karel Roden), who tells unbearably long stories in a guttural Russian accent about worshiping John Wayne, and who even has a portrait of ''der Dyook'' tattooed on his back. You can hardly blame the kid for shooting him, when he finally gets around to it.
This sends Oleg on the run, with Joey Gazelle swanning swiftly after him in his red Mustang, desperately trying to retrieve the hot gun. Also on Oleg's trail is a dirty cop named Rydell, who boasts to the bad guys, ``I got the toughest mob in the world. I'm the law.'' Chazz Palminteri appears to be having a high time as the movie's No. 1 scumbag. His character -- along with every other character in the picture except the two kids and an extremely cheerful pedophile couple -- break the existing land speed record for using the F-word.
As Joey, Walker propels the picture relentlessly forward, dishing out and receiving so many beatings that, at one point, you can't understand a word he's saying because so much blood is pouring out of his mouth. After doing a decent job in his other current movie, ``Eight Below,'' Walker wears well here, despite a wobbly New Jersey accent. Once he gets that down, he's got a shot at becoming the Sylvester Stallone of his generation.
Farmiga, who has clawed her way out of episodic television to become one of the screen's most promising young actresses, isn't given much to do for most of the picture as Joey's wife. But in a stand-alone sequence, during which ``Running Scared'' finally slows down long enough to catch its breath, Farmiga quickly takes it away again. After nearly two hours of children being menaced in ways that will make parents squirm -- possibly with anger -- Teresa asserts her maternal instinct in a way that is consistent with the rest of the film.
If ''Running Scared'' sometimes looks like a storyboard sprung violently to life, Kramer's assured direction turns that into its greatest strength in the clinches, of which there are plenty. The action erupts with the subtlety of a blowtorch, and always with a macabre energy that never fails to set the movie -- and yes, OK, one character, but a minor character -- on fire.
'Running Scared'
***
Rated: R (pervasive strong brutal violence, profanity, sexuality and drug content)
Cast: Paul Walker, Vera Farmiga, Cameron Bright, Karel Roden, Johnny Messner
Writer-director: Wayne Kramer
Running time: 1 hour, 59 minutes
posted by Evil @ 7:09 AM,
