Running Scared is a 2006 crime film written and directed by Wayne Kramer and released by New Line Cinema. The film stars Paul Walker, Cameron Bright, Vera Farmiga, Chazz Palminteri, and Alex Neuberger(in his film debut) and also Johnny Messner. It was released in the United States on February 24, 2006.
The film is rated R by the MPAA for 'pervasive strong brutal violence and language, sexuality and drug content'.
It received mostly mixed reviews, with a 40% on RottenTomatoes.com. The users section gave it a 75 percent fresh rating on RottenTomatoes.com and 7.6 out of 10 on IMDb. It has since gone on to be a cult film.
Plot
The movie begins with Joey Gazelle (Paul Walker) driving with a boy, Oleg Yugorsky (Cameron Bright), in a convertible. Oleg has a blood stain on his shirt, implying that he had been shot. The rest of the movie flashes back to the events that led up to this point. Joey, a low-level mafioso, is attending a drug deal with his boss Tommy (Johnny Messner) and associate Sal. The deal goes bad when masked men burst in and try to steal the drugs and money. The stand-off descends into a shoot-out and several of the masked men are killed before the leader flees. Tommy discovers a badge on one of the dead men, revealing that they were dirty cops. As the mobsters flee in a panic, Tommy gives the murder weapons to Joey, telling him to get rid of them.
Rather than dispose of the guns, Joey comes home to his wife Teresa (Vera Farmiga) and son Nicky (Alex Neuberger). He hides the guns in the basement while Nicky and his friend from next door, Oleg, secretly watch. Oleg returns home to his abusive stepfather, Anzor Yugorsky (Karel Roden) and battered mother. Anzor, who is obsessed with John Wayne, eventually becomes violent when Oleg shows no interest in watching the film The Cowboys. When Oleg insults Wayne gunshots ring out. Next door, the Gazelle family is disrupted by the gunshots and Joey rushes next door. He finds Anzor wounded. Oleg has shot him with a nickel-plated .38, one of the guns Joey stashed in his basement. Oleg has fled with the gun.
Meanwhile, after a painful reunion with Anzor, Oleg escapes the ice cream parlor they are at into the parking lot, sneaking behind parked cars as Anzor storms out after him, ultimately unable to find him. Climbing into the back of a van, Oleg accidentally falls into the clutches of a married couple, Dez (Bruce Altman) and Edele (Elizabeth Mitchell), who take him along with two other kids back to their apartment. After being taken to the large playroom filled with various assortments of toys, and noticing the rather awkward behavior of Dez and Edele, he quickly realizes that the couple are pedophiles. Using an excuse of an upset stomach to go to the bathroom, Oleg at first searches for an unlocked window or some other possible way out of the apartment before noticing Edele's purse by the door. Quickly digging around in it for her cellphone, he sticks beneath the hem of his shorts and beneath his shirt just as Edele notices him. Telling her that he was unable to find the bathroom, although impulsively suspicious, she leads him herself to the bathroom, giving him a small pat atop the head as he enters. Locking the door, Oleg immediately calls up Teresa Gazelle to help him. Telling him to look up in the medicine cabinet for any prescription medication, Oleg grabs one and quickly reads off the address to her, hanging up and stuffing the phone in the toothbrush cup before running over to flush the toilet just as Dez and Edele feverishly burst through the locked door.
Teresa eventually arrives and knocks on the door, Edele instructing Dez to take the kids back to the bedroom before emerging from the playroom in nothing more than a robe and quickly going to answer the door. Telling her that Oleg called her from their apartment, Edele attempts to assure Teresa that she has the incorrect address. Teresa threatens to call and wait for the police to arrive, so Edele hesitantly lets her inside. Searching through the entirety of the apartment, including the bedroom where Edele's "two children" lie in bed asleep, bathroom, and finally the playroom, Teresa finds no trace of Oleg; however, just as she walks out the door, she comes to a realization and roughly forces herself back in, pointing out that there was not a single photograph of them or the children in the entire house. Edele panics and makes an excuse that they were just moving in and that everything was still in storage. Rushing back into the playroom, Teresa gets immensely worried just as Dez and Edele appear, Dez threatening to call the police on her. Turning his threat back on them both with child abduction, Teresa pulls out a gun from her purse just as Edele advances on her, yelling at them to tell her where Oleg is. Terrified, Dez silently indicates the closet in the playroom. She opens it to see an unconscious Oleg fall out, his hands tied and a plastic bag wrapped around his head. Desperately attempting to revive him with CPR, Teresa keeps the two adults at bay with her gun in hand. Oleg eventually revives and Teresa cuts his bindings loose with a surgical instrument, helping him to his feet. Ordering them to move over, Teresa instructs Oleg to get the two other children from the bedroom. In a last ditch attempt, Dez offers Teresa a hundred thousand dollars in diamonds from their safe as long as she just takes Oleg and leaves. Ignoring his offer and keeping her gun pointed at them, Teresa browses the closet behind her, sifting through the costumes until she notices a hangar of plastic body bags, and behind it shelves of several DVD cases with children's names on them. Beneath the shelves, a pile of more "surgical instruments", and finally also noticing the plastic covering of the floor. Aghast, Teresa demands Dez's phone and calls the police, giving an address to the apartment building and reports hearing gunshots from across the hall. She hangs up and shoots them both to death.
Joey continues to search for the gun as his mafia associates become violent and the Russian mob gets involved in the affair. As Oleg and Joey are driving, Tommy and Sal meet up with them at an abandoned train yard. Tommy, seemingly intent on killing Joey for his screw-up, ends up shooting Sal in the head. Turns out when Sal had been arrested before, he walked as an informant. Also, after making a call to Rydell, he activates a bomb in the cop's bag at the train station, killing him. Tommy then drives Oleg to a hockey rink, with Joey following, where they meet all the leaders of the criminal factions. Various accusations and alternative theories of the truth are made, and soon the meeting descends into a shootout. All of the crime lords are killed but not before Joey reveals that he is actually an undercover FBI agent. Finally, a battered Joey and Oleg emerge. Joey takes Oleg out for some breakfast, but a fellow diner turns out to be the pimp that Oleg had previously encountered. The pimp threatens Oleg with a knife and produces the same gun Joey had previously been trying to locate. In the ensuing struggle Joey kills the pimp by stabbing him in the neck. In a flash, Joey and Oleg are seen fleeing the diner. The movie has reached the opening scene once again. Joey and Oleg drive away, both bloodstained, but after lifting up his shirt to find no wound of any kind, Oleg realizes that it is Joey's blood on both of them, as he had been shot in the struggle. All the while, Oleg's mother has locked herself up in the shed behind their house, grievened and staring down at a picture. Moments later she holds up a lighter right in a cloud of propane gas escaping from a tank she opened, igniting it and ultimately blowing up the shed and part of the house, killing herself in the process. All the while, Joey soon loses the ability to drive and passes out from blood loss.
A funeral is held for Joey. Later on, Teresa, Nicky, and Oleg drive out to a rural house, and Joey slides out from under his car. It turns out the funeral was a cover to protect Joey from mob reprisals. The Gazelles adopt Oleg and they all live happily ever after.
Cast
- Paul Walker as Joey Gazelle: A low-level thug working for the Perello mob family. He is ordered to dispose Tommy's gun after it was used in a bloody shootout that resulted in a death of a police officer; however, Joey never does and the gun is stolen by Oleg, thrusting Joey into a dangerous mission to retrieve the missing gun before either the cops or the Perello mob do.
- Cameron Bright as Oleg Yugorsky: The son of Mila Yugorsky and stepson of Anzor Yugorsky, who are Russian immigrants and neighbors of Joey Gazelle. Oleg steals a gun Joey neglected to dispose and uses it to shoot his father, but only wounds him. He runs away after the shooting, causing Joey to give chase in an effort to retrieve the gun before the police do. The Gazelle's adopt him at the end of the movie.
- Alex Neuberger as Nick "Nicky" Gazelle: The son of Joey and Teresa Gazelle. Best friends with next door neighbor Oleg. After the shooting of Ivan he is not seen that much if at all until the end scene where they fake Joey's funeral. Oleg and himself become brothers at the end of the movie.
- Vera Farmiga as Teresa Gazelle: Wife of Joey Gazelle. Tries not to react to, or worry about Joey's job. Comes off as weak and defenseless but proves she can handle herself when she shoots two pedophiles while attempting to find and rescue Oleg.
- Ivana Miličević as Mila Yugorsky: Oleg's mother. She was a prostitute in Moscow and conceived Oleg there. Meanwhile she takes a job to be a prostitute in America in exchange for $50,000 (to be paid through her earnings). When the Russian mafia finds out she is pregnant, they sent Anzor to kill her. Instead, Anzor marries her in order to protect her life. Mila ultimately commits suicide by blowing herself up.
- Michael Cudlitz as Sal "Gummy Bear" Franzone: One of the henchmen for the Perellos. Tommy shoots him upon suspecting him of betrayal.
- Bruce Altman and Elizabeth Mitchell as Dez and Edele Hansel: A suburban couple who take Oleg in while he is on the run. They appear at first to be good, kind-hearted people, but they are revealed to be a pair of pedophile serial killers who lure children into their apartments to molest, torture and kill them. Their surname is derived from the story Hansel and Gretel, and they call each other "mama bear" and "papa bear", respectively.[2]
- Arthur J. Nascarella as Frankie Perello: The head of the Italian mob and father of Tommy 'Tombs' Perello. He is ultimately killed by Joey Gazelle when he attempts to shoot Oleg at the film's climax.
- Karel Roden as Anzor Yugorsky: Russian immigrant who married Mila to protect her. Has a childhood idol in John Wayne and his movies, often finding strength and determination to go on when things seem impossible.
- David Warshofsky as Lester: The cruel pimp that ultimately ends up with the gun after he buys it from a car mechanic. He shoots Joey when he tries to protect Oleg from danger at the film's end. Lester is representative of the "Mad Hatter".[2] In his final moments, Joey stabs Lester with a shiv.
Critical reception
Running Scared opened with $3,381,974 on 1611 screens ($2,099 per a theater average)[1] It currently holds a 40% "Rotten" on movie review site Rotten Tomatoes. The general consensus on said site is that, "This film runs with frenetic energy punctuated by gratuitous violence but sorely lacks in plot, character development and stylistic flair."[3] The film holds an average metascore of 41 out of 100 based on 30 reviews on another movie review site Metacritic.com.[4]
Justin Chang of Variety described Whitaker's cinematography, which primarily used Steadicam and crane shots, as "[dazzling] with a desaturated palette that nevertheless has a rich, grimy luster". He also noted the film had an odd plot, which was disarming given it was shot in Prague rather than somewhere that looks closer to New Jersey.[5] Sam Wigley of Sight and Sound said the vicious gangland depicted in the film resembles an "iniquitous fairytale realm", although it is dark, and "passes in a vertiginous blur of comic-book hyper-reality".[6]
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