July 30, 2017
First off… yes… this is late… I fell asleep last night
sitting in my office chair, hands on the keyboard… when I woke up, I had typed
80 pages of the letters “S” and “K”… I hate it when I do that stupid kinda
stuff. But, when I woke up, I was instantly reminded of a buddy of mine from
way back. Brad Moore… he was my running buddy and partner in crime.
One night, after a night of, shall we say, overusing the
products of the Jose Cuervo company, I woke up laying across the fork of a tree
in his front yard. I somehow had found my way off his front porch, and
apparently thought the fork looked like a nice place to rest. To my credit,
though, I was the lucky one… Brad was asleep on his front steps, his head on the
concrete. He had “road rash” on his forehead for three days…
But, one of the best times we had was when we sat together,
sharing another bottle of that evil Mexican cactus juice, watching a movie
called Midnight Run.
In the movie, Jack Walsh (Robert DeNiro) is an ex-cop out of
Chicago, now based in L.A. as a bounty hunter. He left Chicago after being run
out of town by a mobster named Jimmy Serrano, played by the perfectly-cast
Dennis Farina. Jack was investigating Serrano, and got framed for drug
possession. He left town rather than try to fight the charges. He hates being a
bounty hunter, though, but, what else is an ex-cop gonna do? Jack works for a
low-life bail bondsman named Eddie Moscone (Joe Pantoliano). In a really bad
case of decision-making, Eddie put up the bail for an accountant named Jonathan
“The Duke” Mardukis (Charles Grodin), without knowing Mardukis worked for
Serrano and had embezzled $15 million from him. Now, Mardukis has jumped bail
and has not been seen since. Eddie works out a lucrative contract with Jack to
bring The Duke back to L.A., a deal which will give Jack enough money to get
out of the bounty hunting business and start a coffee shop, a dream he has had
for years. Eddie tells Jack that this will be a “midnight run,” a cinch to
complete and boom, it’s done.
Jack finds Mardukis quick enough, trailing him back to his
home in New York City. But, getting him back to L.A. becomes a comedy of
errors. Plane, train, various cars, a brief stint hobo-ing on a freight train,
you name it, Jack and Mardukis try it. It does not help that Moscone’s
assistant, Jerry (played by Jack Kehoe, who was Hooker’s friend, Erie Kid in
last night’s The Sting), is constantly phoning updates to Serrano, or that FBI
agent Alonzo Mosely (the great Yaphet Kotto) wants to find Mardukis and force
him to testify against Serrano. Oh, yeah, and Moscone has put Jack’s biggest
rival in bounty hunting, Marvin Dorffler (John Ashton), on the case, promising
him a pittance of what he was promising Jack.
There is so much to love about this movie. Director Martin
Brest took George Gallo’s script and let the script do the talking. The
dialogue in Midnight Run is slick and conversational, from Jack and Mardukis
and their constant arguments, to the hilarious tirades of Jimmy Serrano to his
lawyers and his two goons. And even so, now and then, we get actual moments of
emotion and even tenderness, especially in
the scene when Jack, stranded with The Duke in Chicago, has to confront
his ex-wife for a loan, and sees his beautiful young daughter for the first
time in years.
I mean, look, it almost goes without saying that DeNiro can
work a script like Michelangelo worked a slab of marble. But this was one of
the first times he had been in a true madcap comedy. Pairing his gruff guy
stereotype with Grodin’s dryer-than the-Mojave delivery of almost every line
was a moment of genius. The madder Jack gets at The Duke, the more sarcastic
The Duke gets, which only makes Jack madder still, which, in turn… well, you
get the picture.
When the film’s major storylines all come together, Serrano
hunting The Duke, the FBI hunting The Duke, Jack wanting to take Serrano down,
and Eddie about to lose everything because Jack has not turned The Duke in yet,
it’s really a tight suspenseful scene. You find yourself leaning forward in
your seat, ready for anything to happen. And, folks, that is good filmmaking. 
I want to put an added bonus props out to John Ashton in
this movie. I know, you may remember him from the Beverly Hills Cop movies as Taggart,
but in this movie, he really shines as a comedic actor. I have seen him do some
very understated work in movies like Some Kind of Wonderful and, lately, in
Gone Baby Gone, but he is a top-notch comedian in this movie, from slapstick to
the almost Howard Hawks-type flying dialogue, like we were given in the
near-perfect His Girl Friday. I would love to see him work in a Barry
Sonnenfeld movie, where he could do both the physical comedy and the tight
dialogue. Hey, Barry, take note!!!
Run to your Netflix or Amazon Prime and put Midnight Run on
your list. Be careful of what you put in your mouth during the movie, though,
because it will probably end up all over your TV screen…
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