Running Scared (2006)

Directed by Wayne Kramer. Starring Paul Walker, Vera Farmiga, Cameron Bright, Karel Roden, Johnny Messner, Chazz Palminteri, Ivana Miličević, Michael Cudlitz, John Noble, Elizabeth Mitchell, Bruce Altman, David Warshofsky, Alex Neuberger, Arthur J. Nascarella. [R]

Ugly, headache-inducing crime thriller about a low-level gangster (Walker) who has to track down a neighbor kid (Bright) and the gun he’s carrying, which was used in a drug buy gone bad and the shooting of the kid’s abusive step-father (Roden). By shoving the viewer’s face into the scuzzy grime of the streets and the criminal underworld, director Kramer appears to be trying to ape Tony Scott’s frantic, pointlessly showy style, as well as the macho violence of Sam Peckinpah’s lesser efforts; worse, he delivers it all with such grim seriousness that it alternates between the laughably overcooked and the desperately futile. The picture turns downright sick during a sub-plot where the kid is nabbed by a depraved couple that keeps a closet full of small bodybags and a stack of videos with the names of children on the labels—that this sequence is used simply for its lurid, ain’t-we-extreme qualities is indefensibly repugnant. While Walker manages to actually show an iota of range here, his accent is still wobbly enough to sound like a bad caricature. Set in New Jersey, but filmed in Prague.

23/100