![]() ![]() He is in this mess in the first place because, while working as an accountant, he had discovered that his firm was a front for the Chicago mob. As normal as he might present, Jonathan is slippery. If this seems like surprising conversation between a bounty hunter and his prisoner, it is because it is, but Jack is determined not to seem taken aback by Jonathan’s questions. ![]() After a moment he asks, slightly more emphatically, “ why would you eat that?” “Mail it to me from C-block,” he says, but Jonathan remains undeterred. “If you want, I can outline a complete balanced diet for you.” Finally Jack responds. Jonathan continues, in the same quiet, serious tone: “ Cholesterol?” Jack still says nothing. Jack stares back, shoving the meaty end of a drumstick into his mouth. He asks Jack, “Familiar with the word arteriosclerosis?” Eventually he speaks, in a low, grave voice. Jonathan is watching in silence as Jack gnaws on a chicken wing. Bounty hunter Jack Walsh (Robert De Niro) and his captured fugitive, an embezzler with a heart of gold named Jonathan Mardukas (Charles Grodin), are seated across from one another in the dining car on a train that’s speeding west from New York to Los Angeles, where Walsh must bring his charge. MPAA rating: R (under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian).There is a scene towards the beginning of Midnight Run in which the two main characters have their first in-depth conversation. With Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin, Yaphet Kotto, John Ashton, Philip Baker Hall, Dennis Farina, Joe Pantoliano. Editors Billy Weber, Chris Lebenzon, Michael Tronick. Cop,” it’s still good to see his special balance of nimble wit, humanity and excitement back on the screen-and to see an action movie where the people clash and crash more memorably than the cars.Ī Universal Pictures release. And if Brest’s direction doesn’t seem to have advanced far enough past “B. If “Midnight Run” (MPAA-rated R for language and violence) doesn’t really offer De Niro a great role, it does give him a great star showcase. Here he has the jaded wariness and quick reflexes of an ex-cop, the swallowed pain of a longtime divorcee: He lets you feel everything as he runs a counterpoint between Walsh’s brusque exterior and his softer innards. And De Niro deserves it he’s a genius at specifics. When all good actors die and go to heaven, do they get to be Robert De Niro? In the last decade he’s become a real symbol of excellence, somewhat as Brando was in his day, or Spencer Tracy in his. There isn’t a single performance in “Midnight Run” that doesn’t have a pulse, that doesn’t show the actors at their best or near-best, especially De Niro. The great scenes in “Midnight Run” aren’t gunfights or crashes, but moments of interplay or connection between the leads. They’re mostly clowns, Damon Runyonesque oddballs: the sleazy bail bondsman (Joe Pantoliano) and his treacherous clerk, Serrano’s wheedling shyster (Philip Baker Hall) and two clumsy near-moronic hit men (Richard Foronjy and Robert Miranda).īrest’s touch with “Beverly Hills Cop” humanized it he got those idiosyncratic, offbeat little moments that can make a movie pop to life. Everyone else-except FBI agent Yaphet Kotto-is played largely for laughs. ![]() There’s one solidly evil character: Serrano, an ice-cold killer of a Mafia boss, whom ex-Chicago cop Dennis Farina plays with a frighteningly convincing brutality. The movie is really about two inwardly cockeyed Galahads united against a stupidly violent world, riddled with greed, mendacity and hypocrisy. They’re both idealists, and both have been wronged by Mafia boss Jimmy Serrano, symbol of society’s corrupt center. Walsh is lean, mean, lower middle class the Duke a bourgeois with smooth-skinned ideals and baby-fat rhetoric.īrest and screenwriter George Gallo-who also wrote Brian De Palma’s nightmare Mafioso comedy “Wise Guys”-give these two a unifying trait and grudge. Walsh and Mardukas seem unlike in almost every possible way: street-wise versus college-smooth, rough versus genteel, junk food and cigarettes versus health food, loner versus family man. In the film, Walsh and Mardukas, hunter and hunted, almost seem to be inhabiting separate planets-this charmingly naive accountant who embezzled millions of dollars from the mob and donated most of it to charity, and the embittered ex-cop, who initially despises him. ![]()
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