Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Idiotic cinema

I just finished watching Running Scared, and let me tell you, it is one of the most gloriously stupid movies I've seen in a long time. I'm nearly speechless. It stars Paul Walker, of stuff like The Fast and the Furious or Timeline, and he's really trying to act, but he's just terrible at it. It's supposed to be in New Jersey, and he's trying to do an accent, but he sounds more like a Bostonian. He plays this guy who works for the mafia, and he is supposed to be getting rid of their guns after they use them, but he's been keeping them, so he has something to blackmail them with, I guess. Well, the kid who lives next door has an abusive Russian stepdad, and the kid steals one of the guns and shoots the Russian guy. And then runs off with the gun. So the whole movie is Paul Walker trying to find the gun, and either him or the kid stumbling into ridiculous situations. Plus, it's shot in a frenetic Guy-Ritchie-meets-Tony-Scott-and-they-get-hopped-up-on-speed style, with the camera zooming through walls or following bullets in slow motion. It's ridiculous. At one point, the kid is running away from the Russian guy (who survived the shooting) through a parking lot, and he hides in a van. So of course the van is owned by a normal-looking, white-collar couple who bring him home to star in some child porn and murder him. Later, the mob suspects Paul Walker of betraying them, so they bring him to the local hockey rink, and interrogate him by pushing his face down on the ice and having hocky players shoot pucks at him. Plus, they turn on some black lights, so everything on the rink is glowing. I guess they're raver mobsters. And, in a surprise twist that makes no sense, Walker turns out to be an undercover FBI agent. Hey, why not? Oh, and at one point the kid gets a (white) pimp all pissed off at him when he stops the pimp from beating up a prostitute. Then, in a remarkable coincidence, the pimp happens to be the guy who buys the gun (from another guy who happened to come into possession of it), then later pulls it on Walker, saying "Say hello to my little friend!" (complete with Tony Montana accent). It makes no sense, but man is it wacky. And when the movie ends, the credits roll over a Lemony Snicket-style animation, like this is some kind of fairy tale. All I can say is "Wow." If this sounds like your kind of thing, check it out, but be prepared for plenty of stupidity. Don't say I didn't warn you.

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