running scared Tagged Articles at Cinematical

So a few months ago I'm enjoying a stupid cigarette outside of my Park City (Sundance, woo) hotel, and I see my old friend Chris Hyams walking my way. Chris is one of the founders and wizards behind Bside.com, an outfit that does everything from mega-nifty festival schedules to full-bore film distribution. So because I am loud (and also a pathetic movie nerd), I say "Hey Chris! Wouldn't it be cool if your Dad was PETER Hyams?"

Chris smiled and said "It sure would be. And he is my dad!" After about four minutes of Chris trying to convince me he was telling the truth, we quickly got rambling about the awesomeness of Outland, which is a film his dad made way back in 1981, and is still the finest "High Noon in space" movie that Sean Connery ever starred in. During my conversation with Chris, my brain kept screaming "Don't mention The Musketeer! You HATED that movie!" So I didn't.

But then Chris was off to see a movie and I was left thinking "I'm a moron. Been a Hyams fan since I was a kid and Outland is all I could come up with?" So in an effort to rectify my idiocy, I offer this (rather eclectic) list of Peter Hyams flicks that I sorta, really, or very much dig.

Capricorn One (1978) -- Elliot Gould and James Brolin star in this dated-yet-interesting sci-fi tale of a FAKED Mars landing. As he would later do (several times) in his career, Mr. Hyams wrote, directed, AND shot the movie.

Hanover Street (1979) -- Follow a sci-fi film with a wartime romantic drama? With Harrison Ford? Sure, why not?

Outland (1981) -- If you're going to do an unofficial semi-remake, you could at least do it with half the cleverness found here. It really IS High Noon in Space, and it works surprisingly well. Even holds up well today. Solid brawls, a nice percolation of tension, great character ensemble and a great performance by Frances Sternhagen.

Buddy films. They're an interesting breed of cinema. Instead of finding success in a niche, they appeal to the masses. With buddy flicks, you're served a variety of time periods, races, genres, laughs, and scenarios. If one doesn't appeal, the next is sure to come -- all tapping into the goodness of friendship and camaraderie.

And snuggled nicely into that sector of cinema are the buddy cops. They've made the careers of a few big stars, like Mel Gibson and Eddie Murphy. But I don't want to give you something quite so obvious as Beverly Hills Cop or Leathal Weapon. Since this is all due to my recent purchase of Hot Fuzz, I give you that plus an ol' '80s classic -- Running Scared.

Warning: This post contains excessive grasping at straws.

Most knowledgeable folks seem to think that the upcoming Wanted looks like a piece of junk. I can understand their position: the trailer was kind of a sensory assault, and didn't exactly make the film seem original. For my part, I'm not ready to write it off. I like James McAvoy, director Timur Bekmambetov is a fellow Russian, and I tend to enjoy the wildly implausible brand of action that the film seems to be going for. So I'm happy to report a piece of news that kind of surprised me: Wanted has been rated R by the MPAA for "strong bloody violence throughout, pervasive language and some sexuality." That elaboration makes it seem like they won't be trying to trim the bad parts to earn a PG-13.

Now, okay: obviously that doesn't mean much. I mean, the similarly (identically?) themed Hitman was rated R too, and look how that turned out. But for me, the R rating speaks not directly to quality, but to the kind of film Wanted is likely to be. Seeing the trailer (and not knowing the source material), I thought that while it looked kind of cool, it also looked like a broad, inoffensive, second-rate action romp -- my first association, probably due to the presence of Angelina Jolie, was with Lara Croft Tomb Raider. But maybe it won't be. Maybe it'll turn out to be harsh, and sexy, and over-the-top in ways that are actually interesting. Maybe it'll be more like Running Scared or Shoot 'Em Up than like Ghost Rider. You might think that those comparisons don't help and that it still looks like crap, but it seems to me that an R rating for a movie like this increases the odds of it being worthwhile. Or am I off my gourd?

I was fortunate enough to attend a special screening of Smokin' Aces a few months back, and after the movie ended I (and a bunch of other writers) got to sit down and shoot the breeze with writer/director Joe Carnahan. First off, say what you will about the guy, but he sure does know his movies. I've met filmmakers whose eyes got all glassy when I mentioned Walter Hill or Michael Ritchie, but Carnahan can movie-geek with the best of 'em. But when one of the journalists raised the topic of Quentin Tarantino, well, Joe had a lot to say about that.

According to this juicy article at the Sydney Morning Herald, Joe Carnahan will bite your head off if you compare his latest movie to Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction ... but I think this writer may have misrepresented Joey's tone of voice. When we sat down and discussed the exact same things that are covered in that article, Carnahan spoke quite respectfully of QT. He did, however, make it a point to say something like "Hey, Quentin didn't invent guns and hitmen and rapid-fire dialogue, you know!" -- but I never once got the impression that he was knocking Tarantino at all.

Is Smokin' Aces, in your opinion, too reminiscent of Quentin's flicks? Is it unfair to call one filmmaker a copycat of Tarantino if QT spent his entire career copycatting other filmmakers? (Don't get me wrong; I adore Tarantino's movies, but to label his subject matter as "original" is kind of a joke.) Frankly I don't think Carnahan deserves the copycat label, although I can plainly see where the comparisons are coming from. Smokin' Aces actually reminded me more of Running Scared than Pulp Fiction, but if a director wants to do a hard-R, tongue-in-cheek action flick, it seems he's bound to get painted with the Quentin brush. Kinda unfair, if you ask me.

• Firewall - Like Rip Van Winkle with a $25 million per picture deal, nap-addled gruff boy Harrison Ford has seen his career hibernate for more than a decade now, scoring hit upon forgettable hit. Ford's latest variation on a theme is, like the bulk of his post-Indiana Jones filmography, predictable formula fare, and therein lies its broad appeal. In what ultimately feels like a diluted remake of Ron Howard's 1996 thriller, Ransom, he plays a bank security expert whose family is held captive in exchange for his aid in electronically liberating $100 million. Bad guy Paul Bettany sneers and jeers so much that we know from the moment he turns up that Ford is going to heroically beat him and his dirty, dirty bastards, and our belief that goodness triumphing over ee-vil will be renewed. Able British stalwart Richard Loncraine, who directed Bettany in Wimbledon, paints this one by-the-numbers, and anyone looking for what might be their last Harrison Ford fix before Indy 4 (and presumed retirement) will get what they paid for, though very little more.

Remember New Line's "edgy" promo game for Running Scared? The one where you got to play the back of Paul Walker's head, and orally pleasure his wife? Well, it's gone. Sad, I know. New Line offered no explanation to the dozens of teenage boys heartbroken by the game's departure, but there are a handful of possible reasons for their action (some more likely than others). For one thing, the movie's out - maybe they think promotion isn't necessary any more. That said, however, the TV is still packed with ads for Brokeback Mountain, so there's no way that's it. Another option is that, after repeated complaints from public interest groups such as the National Institute on Media and the Family, New Line was just sick of listening to the whining. But you know they loved the internet buzz, which had to have brought them way more attention than the isolated complaints, so, again, probably not the real reason the game was pulled.

The most likely reason is very simple: the movie bombed, which makes New Line suits much less interested in both buzz and dealing with complaints - if, however, Running Scared had made $30 million last weekend, it'd be impossible to shut them up about the power of their racy promotion. Actually, it's probably just as well that it didn't make tons of money because if it had, the web would be overrun by cunnilingus promos, which would be deeply unsettling.

Though the overall box office was down this weekend, you'd never it know it from Madea's Family Reunion's open - the movie took in a healthy $30.25 million, despite not being show to critics prior to its release and earning only lukewarm reviews afterwards. The weekend's other opens, meanwhile, had disastrous debuts, with the Weinstein Company's Doogal (also not screened for critics) earning only $3.6 million despite appearing on more screens than Family Reunion, and Running Scared taking in just over $3 million, barely good enough for the ninth-best total of the weekend.

The news was not all bad for Paul Walker, however, as his Eight Below, though it slipped to second after last weekend's strong debut, finished with a healthy $15.7 million, down just 15% from its opening numbers. The Pink Panther continued to defy expectations in its own right, and managed to stay above the $10 million mark for the third straight week, ending up with the weekend's third-highest total at $11.3 million. Total numbers are after the jump.

Though there are three major releases hitting screens this weekend, a glance at any newspaper's entertainment section will leave you mysteriously convinced that Running Scared is the only one. Why? Make no mistake, it's not because the studios are scared of bad reviews for Doogal and Madea's Family Reunion - it's just that it's expensive to put screenings together for ungrateful critics. Tear. So instead, I've including Tsotsi, the South African release nominated for the best foreign film Oscar, in the roundup, as it also opens this weekend. In sum: Running Scared is derivative crap/brilliance, and Tsotsi isn't as good as you'd expect. Details follow.

• Running Scared: Despite New Line's clever attempted to distract the public via a porntastic promotion, most critics still noticed that Running Scared is pretty bad. In the negative reviews, there's a lot of talk about self-consciousness, and the pallid aping of Tarantino - oddly, the same things show up the handful of good reviews, except there those things are praise-worthy. It's confusing, and leads one to the inescapable conclusion that, even more than usual, your reaction to this one is going to depend almost entirely on your point of view.
  
  
• Tsotsi: Because it's currently playing in just six theaters, reviews of Tsotsi are few and far between. Critics who have seen it, however, found themselves vaguely disappointed, particularly given the film's lofty status as an Oscar nominee. Though most agree that the movie looks gorgeous, it's hard to find anyone who will grant that sort of praise to its storytelling - even those who like it are forced to admit that the film's story of redemption is disappointingly "conventional."
  

Someone at New Line apparently just remembered that sex sells, because they've decided that the best way to promote the forthcoming Running Scared is via a website game wherein you get to play Paul Walker's character and, well, orally pleasure his wife. Seriously. Despite the fact that the movie is "a crime [story] told in flashback, covering 18 hours...of bloodshed in New Jersey and New York" and not, in fact, a porn film, I suppose the vague promise of oral sex rarely fails to put some asses in the seats.

Sadly enough (or happily, depending on your perspective), however, the game seems to be down. If you're over 18, you can keep trying at the official site (knowing us web users, their server probably melted down), where you click "game" and then "mature content," and hope for the best. Otherwise, the good/demented people at AICN have a whole pile of screenshots up, so you can at least pretend that you did the deed.

If anyone actually cares about the movie - again, it's really not porn - it comes out in the US on February 24, and you can find links to a whole lot of clips here.

[via Defamer]

New Line has put the first six minutes of the upcoming Paul Walker flick, Running Scared, online for your viewing pleasure before the film hits February 24th. Because of the violence, nudity and foul language, the footage is restricted and so you first must register your email, birth-date and password before moving forward, meaning those of you under the age of consent are out of luck here.

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by the opening sequence. With its creative editing and gritty look, this one appears to have some legs on it. Written and directed by Wayne Kramer (The Cooler), Paul Walker plays a low level mob guy in charge of disposing of the "hot"weapons after a hit. However, when his son and friend stumble upon one of the weapons used in a cop shooting, the friend takes it and uses it to kill his abusive stepfather. From there it falls on Walker to correct the entire situation or else he won't live to see the next day.

If you're on the fence with this one, I'd suggest checking out the footage before making a decision. Well, unless you're one of those people who like to go in cold. Running Scared also stars Chazz Palminteri, Vera Farmiga and up-and-comer Cameron Bright.