Night of the Running Man (1995)

Touches You

That was an excellent one.

Brilliant and touching

Blistering performances.

I don't really understand some of the review comments stated in some of the other postings. There are three comments that I would dispute. First, one posting stated that Andrew McCarthy didn't limp or seem to be in any pain at many points in the movie...He must be confused and wasn't watching the same movie that I was watching. Andrew McCarthy wonderfully acted his part and used the proper props and movements of a person who had been severely injured. Even when he finally wore boots, they had to be cut up the side so his swollen feet could fit into them. Secondly a snide remark was made saying that McCarthy and Gunn had a romantic encounter in front of a fireplace in LA in the summer. I don't know how this viewer knew it was summer; everyone in the film (except for the nurses uniforms) wore long sleeves and carried or wore a jacket just as McCarthy did. I didn't know that people in LA wore sweaters over their shirts, jackets, and long sleeves in LA in the summer - this doesn't sound practical so it is reasonable for me to assume that that comment should also be discounted. And finally, one viewer called "Andrew McCarthy the king of bad movies"...I happen to be a big Andrew McCarthy fan...I think he is a great actor and enjoy his movies. He can't help the fact that some viewers are too unintelligent to know what is going on in the movie as has been discussed above and then refer to it as a "bad movie".If you haven't seen the movie, it is good, entertaining, contains solid acting, and McCarthy's specialty - making love to a woman that most of you need to view as a "how to" video - if you have the attention span to keep your eyes on the movie for that length of time.

Don't waste your time with this dog. This was an awful movie. Stilted direction, formulaic plot, cliché-ridden characters, wooden acting, badly shot (looked like an old Barbaby Jones episode, but not that good), dreadful script. And that was the good stuff. The 'car chase' in the beginning? Did anyone notice that they were going about 5 mph? I could go on and on, but, I've already wasted too much time on this piece of garbage. Oh, yeah, and how about how this movie treats women? Sexy and stupid and then.....dead.I can't imagine why Scott Glenn or Andrew McCarthy would work on a movie this terrible.

SPOILERS.Unprepossessing cabbie finds himself in possession of one million bucks skimmed from a Vegas casino. An icy killer is called in by the organization to track him down and there follows tense little game of hide and seek that leads to Salt Lake City, with killer (Glenn) only two steps behind the cabbie who is by this time a nervous shambles. Another organization killer in brought into the picture, this time a friendly, matter-of-fact, guy with a sense of humor (Glover). Glover takes the cabbie to his own home, ties him up, and gleefully boils his feet until they are lobster red. Cabbie escapes again, winds up in a hospital, the same hospital that Glover finds himself in. There is a meeting between Glenn and Glover, the two professionals, in which Glover comes up with something out of a B Western -- "Someday the two of us will have to find out which of us is better." I know that it's dumb, but it doesn't leap out at the view because so far the entire movie is pretty dumb. For instance, the cabbie (McCarthy) is stupid for telling a friendly waitress exactly where he's going and how. When the waitress accidentally runs into Glenn she's dumb for not simply denying she met McCarthy but also for lying about where he's headed. (She gets offed in a spectacular fashion for suffering from terminal dumbness.) Then we have McCarthy in hospital with his braised feet being treated by a Barbie Doll of a blonde nurse who falls for him for no discernible reason. She helps him escape (again) takes him and his million bucks to her home and he's sufficiently recovered to be able to make strenuous love although, admittedly, this doesn't require him to spend much time on his feet. Lucky for that, because by any reasonable standards they must be the size of watermelons by now.I hope you're following this because there's going to be a quiz. A final attempt an escape fails and the four principals are brought together -- Glenn, Glover, McCarthy and Barbie. Glenn plugs Glover, proving he's the "better" of the two according to some indecipherable code. Glenn gets his just desserts though. Just as he is about to slice off McCarthy's head, McCarthy whacks him in the forehead with a light board that happens to have a longish nail sticking out of it, thus administering the lobotomy that is long overdue. Glenn mutters a few ironic words, then dies, which is just as well because with all that frontal lobe damage he'd never be able to plan far enough ahead to decide what kind of pizza to order.McCarthy and Barbie now have not only the million bucks but two dead bodies, which they destroy in a fire, leaving the organization to think that the bodies are their own, rather than the killers'. It reminds me a lot of Don Siegel's "Charlie Varrick," but without any grace notes whatever. The motives are weak and not believable. Except for Glenn and Glover, the characters held no interest for me. I didn't want to see McCarthy get killed, of course, because he's an ordinary guy, although to be sure than million dollars doesn't belong to him. And Barbie is unimpeachable. I wouldn't like to see her killed even if she were evil personified. I was also sorry to see Glover get it. What a terrific ham. But Seagal's movie is much more fun.

I've always liked the work of actress Kim Lankford, who starred on the prime-time serial Knots Landing for the first 4 years as Ginger Ward. Therefore, I was pleased to see her turn up for a few minutes playing a waitress who covers for Andrew McCarthy (playing a cab driver on the run from the mob) in "Night of the Running Man." Lankford made the most of her screentime and brought some warmth and humanity to a drab direct-to-video actioner. Therefore, (spoiler coming up ahead, folks), I was thoroughly disgusted with the scene where mob hitman Scott Glenn dangles Lankford's terrified character from high up on a Dam in order to coax McCarthy's whereabouts from her, then drops her to her death. I'm not politically correct by any stretch of the imagination, but I've seen more sensitivity shown towards women in the cinema of Dario Argento, Brian DePalma, and Jess Franco. This was offensive, pointless, disgusting and despicable--and shame on Scott Glenn for participating in such a mean film!