Tanya Batson-Savage, Freelance Writer
Paul Walker in 'Running Scared'.
IT SEEMS the time has finally come when Satan needs to buy himself a spanking new, spiffy winter coat. Jack Frost is planning an invasion because Paul Walker has finally delivered a credible performance in a good movie, Running Scared.
Written and directed by Wayne Kramer, Running Scared is an intense fare whose plot shoots forward with the ease and speed of a bullet. It is close kin to The Matrix, not in the nature and content of the film but with the level of visual artistry that it involves, which greatly rivals the content. Running Scared's most compelling elements are the direction, camera work and editing.
It is daring, exciting and so slick it would make a grease stain jealous. Running Scared has style, style and then managed to add just a little more style. Editing combined with camera work make it a visually arresting film. The camera is hardly allowed to sit still and moves smoothly from one shot to the next so that it actually propels the plot forward. Editing extends the visual movement of the plot as the story is allowed to jump backward and forward, skipping through time to reveal detail.
Additionally, the plot initially seems deceptively simple. Yet as the story leaps forward it becomes one of those films where there are no accidental characters as various people move the story forward, adding in some way to make it skid sideways or even to bring it back on track. Interestingly, though the movie skates around a plot twist, it is not an overly impressive one and it threatened to dampen the movie's impact. However, its final moments provide the necessary salvation.
Yet the most amazing thing is that Kramer managed to cull a decent performance from Walker's normally mind-draining monotone. This feat had seemed a virtual impossibility over the years, as Walker demonstrated in Fast and the Furious and its sequel and even his most recent film, Eight Below, that he could speak, but he could not guarantee meaning. In Running Scared, Walker finally delivers on the promise he made in Varsity Blues, when he had seemed like a young actor with potential.
BOTTOM OF THE FOOD CHAIN
Walker plays Joey Gazelle, a mobster dangling from the bottom rung of the food chain. His grip is, however, loosened from this rung when a gun he was supposed to toss disappeared and he then has to find it before his bosses find him.
The rest of the cast is even more impressive. Vera Farmiga plays Teresa Gazelle and delivers a performance that moves forward from merely okay to intensely interesting as her character develops.
However, the man who steals the show with his supporting role is Karel Roden. Roden is a supremely talented actor who is absolutely brilliant at playing disturbed, off-key characters, as he did in 15 Minutes, and manages again here as a John Wayne-obsessed Russian. Chazz Palminteri (Detective Rydell), Johnny Messner (Tommy Perrello) and David Warshofsky (Pimp Lester) also deliver interesting performances.
