Salubfoto
It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.
Derry Herrera
Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.
Rosie Searle
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
videorama-759-859391
I love B grades, especially ones like this that surprise me, and this is exactly what 'Night Of The Running Man' does, and it doesn't stop for anything. We've got one slick thriller, and Scott Glenn here is bloody scary, an underestimated character of evil, a professional hit-man, void of remorse or emotion (watch one lovemaking scene that sickly shocks). Andrew McCarthy who does well here, plays a loser cab driver, who like he says, gambler that he is, has the worst run of luck possible. Fleeing the scene of a crime, his previous passenger run down, after stealing a suitcase full of money, the kind of moolah that can get you dead (and remember we're in Vegas here) leaves it behind in McCarthy's cab. Here's McCarthy's plan: Take off from Vegas with the money, leaving his little trailer park home, for some greener pasture, but Glenn is hot on his heals, making this a dangerous and scary thriller/adventure. No doubt the trademark scene is the torture one, where John Glover as a sleazy old friend of Glenns, pretty much puts a stop plug on MCcarthy's plans, who gives his feet a bathing that he'll never forget. No surprise, this movie was directed by Mark Lester, who knows how to put magic into movies. NOTRM is pretty much a scene by scene movie, but it has pace, and for the viewer is scary fun, where you wouldn't want be in McCarthy's shoes, where psychopathic hit man Glenn's intensity is the winning formula in making this movie, as thrilling as it is, where it's neatly wraps up. The whole business of the story has a slick and wonderfully nifty feel, and Glenn here, is one of the screen's true evils you'll see in a while.
oldb_2000
Don't waste your time with this dog. This was an awful movie. Stilted direction, formulaic plot, cliché-ridden characters, wooden acting, badly shot (looked like an old Barbaby Jones episode, but not that good), dreadful script. And that was the good stuff. The 'car chase' in the beginning? Did anyone notice that they were going about 5 mph? I could go on and on, but, I've already wasted too much time on this piece of garbage. Oh, yeah, and how about how this movie treats women? Sexy and stupid and then.....dead.I can't imagine why Scott Glenn or Andrew McCarthy would work on a movie this terrible.
Robert J. Maxwell
SPOILERS.Unprepossessing cabbie finds himself in possession of one million bucks skimmed from a Vegas casino. An icy killer is called in by the organization to track him down and there follows tense little game of hide and seek that leads to Salt Lake City, with killer (Glenn) only two steps behind the cabbie who is by this time a nervous shambles. Another organization killer in brought into the picture, this time a friendly, matter-of-fact, guy with a sense of humor (Glover). Glover takes the cabbie to his own home, ties him up, and gleefully boils his feet until they are lobster red. Cabbie escapes again, winds up in a hospital, the same hospital that Glover finds himself in. There is a meeting between Glenn and Glover, the two professionals, in which Glover comes up with something out of a B Western -- "Someday the two of us will have to find out which of us is better." I know that it's dumb, but it doesn't leap out at the view because so far the entire movie is pretty dumb. For instance, the cabbie (McCarthy) is stupid for telling a friendly waitress exactly where he's going and how. When the waitress accidentally runs into Glenn she's dumb for not simply denying she met McCarthy but also for lying about where he's headed. (She gets offed in a spectacular fashion for suffering from terminal dumbness.) Then we have McCarthy in hospital with his braised feet being treated by a Barbie Doll of a blonde nurse who falls for him for no discernible reason. She helps him escape (again) takes him and his million bucks to her home and he's sufficiently recovered to be able to make strenuous love although, admittedly, this doesn't require him to spend much time on his feet. Lucky for that, because by any reasonable standards they must be the size of watermelons by now.I hope you're following this because there's going to be a quiz. A final attempt an escape fails and the four principals are brought together -- Glenn, Glover, McCarthy and Barbie. Glenn plugs Glover, proving he's the "better" of the two according to some indecipherable code. Glenn gets his just desserts though. Just as he is about to slice off McCarthy's head, McCarthy whacks him in the forehead with a light board that happens to have a longish nail sticking out of it, thus administering the lobotomy that is long overdue. Glenn mutters a few ironic words, then dies, which is just as well because with all that frontal lobe damage he'd never be able to plan far enough ahead to decide what kind of pizza to order.McCarthy and Barbie now have not only the million bucks but two dead bodies, which they destroy in a fire, leaving the organization to think that the bodies are their own, rather than the killers'. It reminds me a lot of Don Siegel's "Charlie Varrick," but without any grace notes whatever. The motives are weak and not believable. Except for Glenn and Glover, the characters held no interest for me. I didn't want to see McCarthy get killed, of course, because he's an ordinary guy, although to be sure than million dollars doesn't belong to him. And Barbie is unimpeachable. I wouldn't like to see her killed even if she were evil personified. I was also sorry to see Glover get it. What a terrific ham. But Seagal's movie is much more fun.
floydsmoot
I've always liked the work of actress Kim Lankford, who starred on the prime-time serial Knots Landing for the first 4 years as Ginger Ward. Therefore, I was pleased to see her turn up for a few minutes playing a waitress who covers for Andrew McCarthy (playing a cab driver on the run from the mob) in "Night of the Running Man." Lankford made the most of her screentime and brought some warmth and humanity to a drab direct-to-video actioner. Therefore, (spoiler coming up ahead, folks), I was thoroughly disgusted with the scene where mob hitman Scott Glenn dangles Lankford's terrified character from high up on a Dam in order to coax McCarthy's whereabouts from her, then drops her to her death. I'm not politically correct by any stretch of the imagination, but I've seen more sensitivity shown towards women in the cinema of Dario Argento, Brian DePalma, and Jess Franco. This was offensive, pointless, disgusting and despicable--and shame on Scott Glenn for participating in such a mean film!
