Movie review: 'Running' on empty

When writer/director Wayne Kramer burst onto the scene in 2003 with "The Cooler," critics who raved over the artsy comic-thriller were surprised to discover he'd made two earlier movies that were never picked up by distributors.

Basing our appraisal solely on the one movie we'd seen, we couldn't understand how that might happen. But now that we've seen "Running Scared," we're getting a pretty good idea.

This overwrought, over-caffeinated exercise in bloodletting tells the story of a mob flunky trying to get rid of a gun used to kill a cop. But he makes a mess of the job, and soon he's being targeted by the police, the Italian mafia, the Russian mafia and -- we kid you not -- a pair of hockey players.

We can't tell you what the hockey players are doing there. Not because it might ruin the surprise; but because we don't have the faintest idea. By the time they show up, the movie has so distanced itself from logic that we've quit trying to make any sense of it.

The central premise is familiar. When Joey (Paul Walker, also starring in "Eight Below") loses the gun, the story starts to follow the weapon as it's passed from one thug to the next. True to formula, Joey is always just one step behind: He walks into a building just as the guy who now has the gun walks out.

If Kramer stuck to this theme, he'd have a clichéd but functional thriller. Alas, he feels he needs to incorporate every type of social deviance he can imagine, from child molestation to the making of so-called "snuff" films. This is the kind of movie where character development consists of a guy mentioning in passing he has a meth lab in his back yard.

Kramer's overblown cinematic style adds to the incoherence. Scenes -- especially the ones involving violence -- are replayed back and forth as if we're watching a videotape stuck in the player. Throw in the incessant jump-cuts, and the whole thing starts to look like a first-year art-school project.

Kramer shows no shame in his attempt to manipulate the viewer. Joey's aging father, who has serious health problems, lives with him. At least, he lives with him in the first reel. The action returns to Joey's house several times, but we neither see nor hear about him again.

And don't even get us started on the dialogue. Chazz Palminteri, who plays a crooked cop, has been in some cheesy thrillers, but nothing to match this. He deserves Oscar consideration just for not flinching when he has to mouth lines that could have been lifted straight from 1930s dime novels.

The best thing about the movie is Joey's car, a mint-condition vintage Mustang. That's what we end up rooting for. Whenever a thug gets close enough to put a bullet into Joey, we plead, "Not in the car, please! The blood will ruin the upholstery."

Running Scared

* out of four stars

The setup: A mobster told to get rid of a gun that was used to kill a cop looses it instead and ends up being chased by every form of bad guy.

What works: The premise, while creaky, has promise.

What doesn't: You name it -- the plotting, writing, cinematography, obsession with perverse evil.

Great line: A crooked cop brags, ""I've got the toughest mob in the world -- I'm the law.""

Jeff Strickler • 612-673-7392