58) Midnight Run

Midnight Run (1988)

Director: Martin Brest

Starring: Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin, Yaphet Kotto, John Ashton, Dennis Farina, Joe Pantoliano

Kate was out all day today with her mum doing a rogain (please note rogaining is the sport of long distance cross-country navigation and has no link to the mens hair loss treatment of the same name). I, on the other hand, had a long day of essay marking ahead of me. As I was up reasonably early for a Saturday I decided to watch a movie over breakfast before I dove into marking. Midnight Run is a film I picked up a while ago on the recommendation of Tony Martin. Over the years he has often referred to Midnight Run as being his foolproof movie recommendation. Apparently everyone enjoys Midnight Run. It was reasonably short, and I was looking for something I would enjoy, so I decided to test this theory.

Jack Walsh (De Niro) is an ex-cop who now works as a bounty hunter who works for bondsmen retrieving clients who have tried to skip bail. Jack's boss, Eddie Moscone (Pontoliano) offers him $100,000 to bring back a particularly important client, Jonathan "The Duke" Mardukas (Grodin). Mardukas was an accountant who embezzled $15million from the mob and gave it to the poor. If Mardukas is not retrieved within five days, Eddie forfeits his bond and will be out of business. Jack locates Mardukas in New York and then sets about getting him back to Los Angeles. However, the mafia wants Mardukas dead, and the FBI wants to take him in so he can be their key witness in the trial against mob kingpin Jimmy Serano (Farina). Throw in rival bounty hunter Marvin Dorfler (Ashton), also interested in claiming the reward, and Jack faces an uphill battle to get Mardukas back to LA in time to claim his reward.

Midnight Run is effectively a buddy road-trip movie, as the majority of the story concerns Jack and Markdukas' efforts to get across the USA by the deadline, and in between the action sequences and the laughs it is the central relationship of the two leads that makes this film a gem. De Niro and Grodin have great chemistry as the film's odd couple. At this point in his career De Niro had yet to really venture into comedies (Analyse This, Meet the Parents and to a lesser extent The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle came later in his career) but he shows strong comic timing while also bringing strength to some of the film's more poignant moments. Grodin, who you may know as the father in the first two Beethoven movies (the big dog, not the composer), more than holds his own in what must have been a daunting role, requiring so much one on one screen time with a legend like De Niro. Watching the constantly feuding duo dealing with their own moral quandaries; Jack being an honest cop who was driven out of the Chicago police department because he refused to take kickbacks who now finds himself actively trying to keep a criminal away from the FBI so that he can claim his reward, Mardukas a simple accountant who when finding he has been working for the mob decides to steal from them, justifying his actions by giving the money away, as well as trying to understand the other's makes for engaging viewing.

The film's director, Martin Brest, has one of the more baffling resumes of a Hollywood director. In the 1980s he made two films, Midnight Run and Beverly Hills Cop. They sit together fine. In the 1990s he made another two films, Scent of a Woman and Meet Joe Black. Again, those two movies work together fine, but there is little in common with his output from the 1980s. Since 2000 he has only made one film, the ill-conceived Gigli with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez (back when they were 'Bennifer'). Unsurprisingly he hasn't worked since.

There are certain things in movies which lock it in an era (think all of that awful Prince music in Batman), or at the very least make it apparent that this is not the present day. In the case of Midnight Run it is De Niro's smoking. He smokes constantly during this film, but it is the locations of his smoking that stand out. In the course of this film he lights up twice in restaurants, twice in airports and once on an aeroplane. I was waiting for a scene in a hospital to cap it off, but it never eventuated. Each time he lit up I thought, "Hang on, you can't smoke there... oh wait, it's the 80s. Play on."

It was announced recently that Universal studio was developing a sequel to Midnight Run with De Niro reprising his role as Jack Walsh opposite a younger comic foil. It's a bit of a shame that they couldn't find room for Grodin to return as it was the De Niro/Grodin chemistry which made it work, but given he's 75 now (he's much older than he looks) he may not be interested. There's word that the younger target could be Mardukas's son though, a premise which doesn't fill me with confidence.

Midnight Run is great fun. It's got the same blend of action and comedy as an Ocean's 11, and bolstered by some genuinely good performances makes for excellent entertainment. One of the better buddy movies going round.