Midnight Run (1988)
(SPOILERS) Midnight Run has a lot to answer for. It gave Robert De Niro the impression he was great at comedy. He is great in Midnight Run. It’s easily his funniest performance. But that performance is a consequence of the alchemy of co-stars, script and director and, most fundamentally, that De Niro isn’t playing for laughs. Sure, he’s been funny in stuff since, mostly he’s been mugging off his taciturn tough nut persona, a one-trick pony show that’s usually been milked in undemanding and inconsequential material. Midnight Run is something else entirely; a buddy movie with genuine heart, a road trip that never feels like its simply pushing formula buttons, an action comedy with genuine stakes and drama. It’s a very, very funny movie, with probably the highest quota of memorable lines per scene that side of Tarantino. We should all be grateful a sequel hasn’t had the chance to besmirch its memory.
Well, one kind of has. Make that three. Six years later a trio of TV mo…
(SPOILERS) Midnight Run has a lot to answer for. It gave Robert De Niro the impression he was great at comedy. He is great in Midnight Run. It’s easily his funniest performance. But that performance is a consequence of the alchemy of co-stars, script and director and, most fundamentally, that De Niro isn’t playing for laughs. Sure, he’s been funny in stuff since, mostly he’s been mugging off his taciturn tough nut persona, a one-trick pony show that’s usually been milked in undemanding and inconsequential material. Midnight Run is something else entirely; a buddy movie with genuine heart, a road trip that never feels like its simply pushing formula buttons, an action comedy with genuine stakes and drama. It’s a very, very funny movie, with probably the highest quota of memorable lines per scene that side of Tarantino. We should all be grateful a sequel hasn’t had the chance to besmirch its memory.
Well, one kind of has. Make that three. Six years later a trio of TV mo…