CORPORATE LINE: Paul Walker stars in the fast-paced crime drama RUNNING SCARED from critically acclaimed director Wayne Kramer. Walker plays a low-level mobster who, in order to save his family, must recover a gun used in a mob hit before it’s found by his bosses or the cops. And lest you think it’s just another mob film, Kramer reveals a deeper subtext within the film’s story. He says he envisioned it as “a child’s Grimm’s fairy tale nightmare, but taking place in a mob world.”
THE REVIEW: Here is another in a long line of films that deal with a family in trouble. Firewall just came out and here we are with another film with a family threatened—although in a different context.
The problem with Running Scared is how far it is willing to go in an attempt to disturb us. The combination of a kid and blood and guts doesn’t work for me. Everything about Running Scared is about upping the ante to see how far they can go. All the while most of Running Scared goes past the logical and into the ridiculous. It’s as if director Wayne Kramer said “I want to get every possible deviant behavior into one film” and they went to work.
RUNNING SCARED
FRANKLY: Kramer wants to work the audience. He wants you to cringe and beg for mercy. You will beg—for the movie to end. Not because you’re freaked out—but because the movie is just plain bad.
+ Charlie Craine
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