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-assed 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. The film has a sequence involving pedophiles that takes bad taste to an all-new level, and the final big secret reveal 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 is done right, but this one misses the mark big-time.