Running Scared

Quentin Tarantino loves it. Roger Ebert is “in awe,” as the TV commercial proclaims. I, for one, insist that it sucks. Paul Walker screams his head off as a two-bit criminal with a big-ass secret looking to retrieve a gun that shot a cop during a messed up drug deal. Wayne Kramer, who directed the vastly overrated The Cooler, wants you to know that he can direct a balls-out action film. So he pulls out all of the stops and uses every trick in the book. Unfortunately, he forgot to take good actors and a decent script along with him, and those tricks amount to overkill after the first 10 minutes. One film sequence involving pedophiles takes bad taste to an all new level, and the final big secret makes everything that happened before it absolutely pointless. Walker embarrasses himself with a tough-guy accent, and Chazz Palminteri embarrasses himself by being Chazz Palminteri. I love extreme cinema when it’s done right, but this one misses the mark big time.