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“Running Scared,” the newly released Wayne Kramer film, takes filmmaking to the extreme. The film stars Paul Walker, popular for his characteristic roles in Timeline and The Fast and the Furious. Walker plays a Mafia cohort by the name of Joey Gazelle. For fear of mafia weapons becoming key evidence in crime scenes, Joey is hired to remove the guns and, therefore, remove each scene’s traces to the mob. Rather than disposing of the weapons, he keeps them in his house, which he shares with, wife Teresa (Vera Farmiga) and 10-year old son Nicky (Alex Neuberger). Soon, though, Joey’s son discovers a gun and allows his Russian friend Oleg (Cameron Bright) to “borrow” one in an attempt to kill Oleg’s abusive stepfather. Unfortunately, though, the gun is tied to several previous killings. Following Oleg’s failed attempt at killing his stepfather, the plot twists and turns to an extreme as the gun becomes a symbol of truth and fear. It ties both Joey and the rest of the underworld to unlimited amounts of illegal activity. The story then follows Joey as he attempts to track down the gun and at the same time, continue to run from detectives and crime bosses. After coming across prostitutes, drug lords, Russian mobsters, and even pedophiles, the audience is treated to a very explosive and shocking ending. Although the story does have a lot of action and suspense, it lacks of character development, and excessive amounts of plot twists prove to extreme to follow or be useful to the plot.Walker has a very large role of both criminal and family man. However, the movie’s pace is so quick that the audience does not have time to see the actor flourish and truly act. A majority of Paul’s lines in the movie involve excessive swearing and general looks of discontent. If the director and writers included more drama and a smaller sense of constant urgency for Walker to rush into each scene, the movie may have had a more complex image. In addition to Walker, though, each of the children in the story, Nicky and Oleg, seem very two-dimensional. Each character rarely speaks and rarely shows emotion among their very emotional mothers. Although both actors did include a sense of maturity and sincerity, their roles were very limited for the amount of screen time they received. The lack of development between these actors and even the side actors generally degraded an otherwise excellent action film. Furthermore, the excessive amounts of plot twists provided some exciting and suspenseful scenes, but generally took away audience attention from the main path of the story: Joey Gazelle’s search for the gun. One such example is the film’s introductory scene found in the promotional trailers: crime lords gathering for a drug deal and being caught by undercover police. Although the scene is very important in introducing Joey and his lost gun, it is very excessive with long-lasting violence and no character introduction. Other scenes, such as very lengthy side story of two pedophiles that kidnap Oleg, were extreme and had no relevance to the main storyline. All in all, the extreme plot twists and lack of character development in Running Scared were a negative aspect to the film. However, the film may please movie-goers looking for an action-packed story. Drama fans, on the other hand, may not be too pleased with the film. “Running Scared” is an experiment in taking filmmaking to the extreme ends up with uneven results.
