Running Scared 2006

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Running Scared is a vicious and brutal B-movie jacked up to hysterical, hallucinatory proportions -- a pulpy, violent action picture that torments the viewer as much as its characters, and I mean that as a compliment. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: There is a child at the center of this ultraviolent story, and the devices used to keep us on tenterhooks regarding his survival are appallingly manipulative. Read more

Allison Benedikt, Chicago Tribune: There's clearly supposed to be tension between Joey's good and bad sides. Sure, he's a mobster, but he's also a family man, which makes him... gray. (Not black and white = very sophisticated.) Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: The end result of all these cross-mob confrontations is an orgy of nihilistic violence that is curiously exhilarating, I am almost ashamed to say. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Running Scared is for people who like movies, who don't need to have a movie mean something in order to enjoy it and who can delight at the sheer craft of a story designed only to shock, amuse and hold an audience. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: It's ugly and it's vile and it's disgusting and it's creepy and it just got tiresome. Read more

Hap Erstein, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Presumably patterned after Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, but substantially more graphic, there is surely an audience for this empty brutality, but you would not want to know anyone to whom this picture appeals. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: It says something when the most sympathetic character is a kid who shoots his dad with a stolen pistol. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: It's like a gruesome merry-go-round filled with unpleasant characters and bad acting. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: A depressing piece of gun-crazy Hollywood scuzz that, with its gassy style and runaway immorality, makes a Tony Scott movie look like a Robert Bresson picture. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: As the movie becomes more howlingly ludicrous by the second, it's tempting -- and not in a cynical way, either -- to start reading it as a parody of pornographic video game violence. Read more

Bruce Westbrook, Houston Chronicle: But even beyond its sleazy pandering and sensationalism, the film's worst transgression is its exploitation of young children. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: The hallucinatory crime thriller Running Scared, written and directed by Wayne Kramer, is pretty awful. Read more

Michael Booth, Denver Post: Running Scared is about as hard an "R" rating as you can get, with buckets of blood, full- frontal nudity and swearing that would peel gum from the sidewalk. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: An exhilarating bloodbath of a film, Running Scared may not be perfect, but it's got adrenaline, wild eyes and sleaze to spare. Read more

Scott Brown, Entertainment Weekly: A giddily awful, awfully giddy action noir. Read more

Dallas Morning News: Read more

Chuck Wilson, L.A. Weekly: Running Scared is decently acted and divertingly brutal, but it's also a giant step backward for its maker. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: If it's possible to admire his movie's heedless energy, it's also possible to hate its guts. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: This overlong fantasy of urban violence is so far over the top -- you might as well be watching a computer monitor while somebody else has a high time playing the video game Grand Theft Auto. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: It's borderline irresponsible, a virtual horror movie of a gangster thriller. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: With a complex plot that unspools with surprising clarity, Running Scared displays a reckless intensity. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Running Scared goes so far over the top, it circumnavigates the top and doubles back on itself; it's the Mobius Strip of over-the-topness. I am in awe. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: It's lower on the food chain than a mere exploitation picture because it clings so desperately to the notion that it's a serious movie about violence; it doesn't even have enough integrity to serve up cheap, sick thrills for their own sake. Read more

Jeff Strickler, Minneapolis Star Tribune: 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. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Ethnic stereotyping, moral qualms and plot improbabilities aside, you just wish a movie like Running Scared wasn't so anxious to be exciting all the time: It gets so monotonous. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: In the opening minutes of Running Scared, a drug deal goes bad and takes the entire movie with it. Read more

Trevor Johnston, Time Out: With audiences jaded by the usual sex and splatter, do the filmmakers have no qualms about juicing up proceedings with edgy but troubling material which clearly needs more conscientious handling? Apparently not. Read more

Mike Clark, USA Today: A potential howler done in by a tendency to wear too much body tissue on its sleeve. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety: A ferociously energetic piece of filmmaking, Running Scared makes the seedy Vegas milieu of writer-director Wayne KramerWayne Kramer's first feature, The Cooler, look as tasteful as The Sound of Music. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Everything feels begged, borrowed and stolen from other better movies, from Quentin Tarantino's exclamation-point violence to the slo-mo bullet trajectory shots from The Matrix. Read more