Running Scared
Tags: depressing, cult, neo noir, murder, violence

Plot synopsis:
The movie begins with Joey Gazelle (Paul Walker) driving with a boy, Oleg Yugorsky (Cameron Bright). Oleg has a blood stain on his shirt, implying that he had been shot. The movie then flashes back eighteen hours before the unfolding scene. Joey, a low-level mafioso, is attending a drug deal with his boss Tommy (Johnny Messner) and associate Sal when a trio of masked men burst in and try to steal the drugs and money. When Tommy shoots one of the hoods, a shootout commences in which all the drug dealers and two of the hoods are killed, forcing their leader to flee. Tommy then discovers that the men were dirty cops. As the mobsters flee in a panic, Tommy gives the murder weapons to Joey, telling him to get rid of them.Rather than dispose of the guns, Joey goes home to his wife Teresa (Vera Farmiga) and son Nicky (Alex Neuberger), and hides the guns in the basement. Unknown to Joey, Nicky and his friend from next door, Oleg, are watching from a hiding place. Oleg goes home to his abusive stepfather Anzor Yugorsky (Karel Roden), the outcast nephew of the Russian mob boss Ivan Yugorsky (John Noble). He runs a meth lab in the back yard. When he once again abuses Oleg's mother Mila (Ivana Milievi), Oleg shoots him with a nickel-plated .38 that he had stolen from Joey's basement. Next door, the Gazelle family is disrupted by the gunshots and Joey rushes next door. He finds Anzor wounded and Oleg gone. When Anzor describes the weapon to Joey, he realizes that Oleg had stolen one of the murder weapons, and rushes out in a frantic search to find Oleg and the gun.Oleg runs to a nearby park, where he is caught by a homeless man, who takes his gun and drags him into a public toilet and drug den. Joey and Nicky follow, trying to find him. The criminals shoot each other, alerting Joey and giving Oleg time to escape with the gun. Oleg runs until he finds a pimp named Lester smacking around one of his prostitutes, Divina. When Lester pulls a knife on the prostitute, Oleg pulls his gun on him and pulls the trigger, but the revolver is empty. The pimp threatens to cut the boy but the prostitute knocks Lester unconscious. She prepares to run but notices Oleg coughing. Indebted to him, she takes him to a pharmacy to get him an inhaler. When the pharmacist refuses, she draws the gun and gets the inhaler at gunpoint.The surviving dirty cop Rydell (Chazz Palminteri) informs Tommy that Joey has lost the gun, and that it is out on the street in the hands of Oleg. Joey goes to meet the boss of the Italian mob, Frankie Perello (Arthur J. Nascarella) at a diner to say that the gun used to shoot Anzor was not from the shootout with the cops. Frankie says that he wants Oleg found, because Frankie and Yugorsky are working together on a 'gasoline deal', and he wants them to remain in good standing. Outside, Nicky sees Oleg and and the prostitute Divina enter the same diner, and follows them into the restaurant. Oleg finds Nicky in the bathroom and they stash the gun in a toilet tank. Oleg and Joey leave, and Oleg tells his father the gun is stashed in the toilet tank. They return to the restaurant but the gun is not there.After Oleg leaves the restaurant and tries to convince Divina to take him with her out of town. The police show up and arrest her and take Oleg with them to the police station. There, the dirty cop, Rydell, interviews Oleg and tries to get him to reveal the location of the gun. The boy lies, and is released into his stepfather's custody.At home, Teresa tries to convince Mila to go to a shelter. Mila tells her that she was a prostitute in Moscow who was brought over by Yugorsky. She became pregnant and refused to have an abortion, so Yugorsky sent Anzor to kill her. Instead, he married her in order to give her protection.Anzor takes Oleg to an ice cream parlor and attempts to get him to reveal the gun's location. Oleg runs away and hides inside a parked van. The couple who owns the car, Dez (Bruce Altman) and Edele (Elizabeth Mitchell), take him with their two children back to their apartment. They take Oleg to a large playroom filled with various toys and a camera, and Oleg thinks Dez and Edele are acting weird. He complains of an upset stomach and asks to go to the bathroom. Oleg tries to escape the apartment, but instead finds Edele's purse by the door. He takes her cellphone and Edele tells him where the bathroom is. He calls Teresa Gazelle. She tells him to find look in the medicine cabinet for a prescription with an address, and surreal, threatening shadows dance on the wall behind him. She promises to come get him as Dez and Edele begin to try and force their way into the bathroom. They catch Oleg just as he hides the cellphone.Teresa drives out to the apartment, breaks glass to get in the front door, and knocks on the door. Edele instructs Dez to take the kids back to the bedroom before emerging in nothing more than a robe. Teresa tells her that Oleg called her from that address. When Edele refuses, Teresa threatens to call the police, and Edele lets her inside. Edele searches the entire apartment, including the bedroom where Edele's "children" are in bed asleep, Teresa cannot find Oleg; but just before she leaves, she suddenly realizes something is odd. She forces herself back in, pointing out that there was not a single photograph of their children in the whole house. Edele insists that they have just moved in and that everything was still in storage. Teresa desperately searches the apartment. Dez nods towards a closet in the playroom, and Teresa finds Oleg tied and gagged with a plastic bag over his head. She holds a gun on the husband and wife as she revives Oleg with CPR. They threaten to call the police and she tells them to go ahead.When Oleg revives, Teresa frees him and tells Oleg to get the two other children and wait outside. Dez offers Teresa a hundred thousand dollars in diamonds from their safe if she will just take Oleg and leave. Ignoring him, Teresa looks in the closet and sees children's costumes, plastic body bags, surgical instruments, and shelves of DVD cases with children's names on them. Teresa notices that the playroom floor is completely covered in plastic. Horrified, Teresa demands Dez's phone and calls the police, reporting that she heard gunshots at the apartment's address. She hangs up and shoots Dez and Edele.Joey continues to search for the gun, tracking it to the owner of a body shop, only to find out that he sold it to Lester the pimp. Joey takes Oleg with him to go retrieve the gun, but just as Joey sees the pimp with his gun, Tommy and Sal show up. They coerce Joey into following them to an abandoned train yard, and leave Oleg in the car. Tommy threatens to kill Joey for his screw-up but suddenly kills Sal. Tommy explains that Sal had been arrested and had walked by agreeing to become a snitch on his friends. He then calls Rydell who's arrived at the train station to pick up the bag that he thinks contains the gun. Tommy activates a bomb in the bag, killing Rydell.Tommy drives Oleg to a hockey rink and Joey follows. They meet the Italian and Russian mob bosses along with Anzor. Mobsters hold Joey down on the ice and Russian hockey players shoot pucks into his face several times. Yugorsky demands that Oleg tell them where he got the gun. When he lies, the boss of the Russian mob orders Anzor to kill Oleg. Joey pleads with Anzor and he hesitates. He finally drops the gun and his uncle shoots him for being weak.Joey tells Yugorsky that Frankie had wanted to kill Anzor for cooking meth in the neighborhood, and that the gun was Tommy's. Tommy pulls a gun to kill Joey and a shootout begins between Frankies's mobsters all of the mobsters except Frankie. Frankie kills Yugorsky and walks over to kill Joey. Joey reveals that he is an undercover FBI agent and even his wife doesn't know. Oleg levels a pistol at Frankie, who hesitates long enough for Joey to grab Frankie's shotgun and kill him. As Joey and Oleg leave the hockey rink, the FBI arrive, and an agent explains that they lost his signal in New Jersey.Joey takes Oleg out for breakfast, but as they leave, Lester the pimp walks in. Lester threatens Oleg with a knife. Joey intercedes but Lester pulls out the chrome-plated snub nose 38, the one Joey has been looking for. They fight, and Joey kills Lester. Joey and Oleg flee the diner. As in the scene at the beginning of the movie, Joey and Oleg drive away at high speed, both bloodstained. But the blood on Oleg isn't his, it's Joey's, who was wounded by Lester.Mila has locked herself in the shed containing the meth lab behind their house. She looks at a picture of Oleg, believing he is dead. She holds a lighter to an open propane tank and blows up the meth lab in her backyard, killing herself. Teresa and Nicky come out of the house to investigate and see Joey weaving down the street, losing consciousness from blood loss. Joey crashes the car and Teresa holds him as he goes limp. Oleg stands in front of his house, watching it burn. Fire trucks arrive.Days later,Teresa, Nicky, and Oleg attend Joey's funeral. They leave the city and drive to a small farm house, where Joey's newly repaired Mustang is parked in the driveway. Teresa, sitting on the car's bumper, seemingly talks to herself when she says "Don't ever ask me to bury you again, Joey." Joey emerges from under the car and hugs Nicky and Oleg, who's now part of their family.

Review: There are great transitions, effective dynamic time warping (speed up or slow down a shot, like a bullet flying through the air), and if you thought Maynard, Zed, and the Gimp were bizarre in "Pulp Fiction", wait until you meet the creepy married couple who through their sick hobby make every other evil character in this film look like Buddhist Monks.
Tarantino comparisons will abound as with any clever and violent film these days, but Wayne Kramer imprints Running Scared with his own wonderful style.
I wasn't expecting much from this movie with Paul Walker as the star attraction, but this movie was thoroughly entertaining and I would highly recommend seeing it.Paul Walker gives a good performance although Cameron Bright steals the show even though I've always saw the kid as creepy after seeing him in The Butterfly Effect.
The way the movie was shot and the effects were showed off somewhat, and that's what appealed to me the most about the trailer.I thought I was going to see a gangster flick, great, but I got something else, which turned out to be better.
I loved the story, the characters, and the twists and turns this movie provided.The acting was quite good and believable.
I never have been a Paul Walker fan, but when i found out the talented Wayne Kramer was making a new movie i had to go see it.
I think this is one of the best action/mobster movie of the year so far, if the movie is still playing near you and you are over 13 i think you should give this one a try, the movie is full of twists and turns, although i think the final twist should of been left out and i think some of the vulgar language could of been left out, but those are minor issues.So if you are looking for a fun, action packed, dark,edgy, and very stylish film i suggest you go see Running Scared..
The gangster Joey Gazelle (Paul Walker) is in charge of getting rid of the guns that killed dirty cops in a transaction of drugs between Italian mobsters and Afro-Americans.
Along the night, Joey, the Russian and the Italian mobster and the dirty cops chase the little boy trying to retrieve the gun and disclose who ordered the boy to shoot his stepfather."Running Scared" is a great surprise and pure action, recalling the style of "Pulp Fiction" and "Reservoir Dogs".
Not believable.Horrible stereotypes and ill-researched lingo -- The pimp, hookers, Mexicans, thugs, thieves, weirdos all were obvious clichés appearing as if they had been fabricated by a man with the intelligence and street knowledge of an 8th grader.John Wayne -- An attempt to create a memorable character that failed before it began; the audience never knew enough of why this guy loved The Duke so damn much.Why was the gun so damn precious -- it was passed like a nugget of gold, I suppose one has to have firearm know-how in order to understand why EVERY hood in town wanted the gun.Child Pornographers?
Why not add them into the mix, we have no idea where they came from but whatever, they've been thrown into every other crime drama film to gum up the works, why not here.End scene, the Mexican Standoff -- not enough information about the Mob or the Russians to care whether or not they lived or died or who won the battle.I can't believe Walker came out of that mess of excessive violence with a few abrasions and nothing more.Horrible pimp with a horrible Scarface reference -- felt like a Junior High School kid's idea to throw that in.No research done in street lingo, other directors have portrayed gangsters and thugs properly, I guess this writer was l-a-z-y.Its tough to buy that EVERYONE in a ten mile radius is evil -- Walker and the kid never ran into anyone remotely normal.Too many evils in the course of a night -- child porn, gambling, murder, prostitution, grotesque torture sequences, crooked cops, Russians, not to mention everyone seems ready to commit homicide and is waiting for the opportunity.The cops didn't play a crucial enough role and even when it seemed as if they added SOMETHING to the plot, the primary cop involved was blown up, quite randomly.Bad monologues -- John Wayne and the one by Paul Walker, the emotional one, or lack thereof.
After piling bad events on top of each other the entire movie (yeah, the kid-killing snuff couple was creepy but why were they there if not so just more bad things could happen - and don't say that line about the wife realizing paul walker is not an evil man) it ends with a very predictable confrontation and incredibly unbelievable/unexplained miraculously happy finish.
This movie is the type that has combined enough "flashy" techniques with enough "real life" (apparently real life is not just gritty, but craps all over you in the form of pimps and cop-killing drug dealers) that a meat-head (no offense paulie, you just play them in every movie) like Paul Walker would think he has made an awesome, training day-esquire movie..
Honestly, this is one of the worst movies I have seen in quite a long time.First of all, Paul Walker couldn't act his way out of a pre-school.
Finally, why did Oleg's mother kill herself, and why did Oleg not seem to care all that much.It is probably safe to say that I will be "Running Scared" from the next movie that this director decides to become involved with.P.S. John Wayne???
I watched this movie in a near empty cinema a day after it opened in the UK after seeing adverts on the television, it looked like my sort of film and it certainly was there are plenty of people missing out on this one it seems!
The casting is exemplary Paul Walker and Cameron Bright are the standouts as the lead Joey Gazelle and young Oleg Yugorsky respectively, in fact there is not a poor performance throughout the film so very well casted!
In the end, we get more plot twists than Paul Walker can count and a movie that just tried too hard.
As it is, I can only recommend this movie to action/crime/thriller junkies & Paul Walker fans..
I like the actors in the movie but I could not help but think I was watching some college film made by someone who really, really wanted to shock his classmates.
BUT, then come plot, acting, tone, plot, casting, plot...Anyone who's seen the previews knows that Walker plays a basically good dude who's in the mafia, has a family, and has to get rid of a gun used to kill a cop, but loses it "Tommy used it to burn a dirty cop.
If they find it, I'm dead." The gun has been stolen by Walker's son's best friend Oleg (played by the wooden and ever irritating Cameron Bright of "Godsend" and "Ultraviolet" who I think is only in films because he has creepy eyes) who tries to kill his abusive daddy with it and then takes off.
Meanwhile Paul Walker has to try and enlist the help of his son while avoiding arrest/death.Sounds like it could be a pretty good flick, right?
If they realized how silly it all was they could have had something not unlike "Pulp Fiction" on their hands, but because they expect you to stay perched at the edge of your seat for two hours, long after you've tired of the characters, it comes closer to something you'd find in the straight-to-video action section back around 1996.The movie is jumpy.
The gun goes missing when his son's Russian friend steals the gun to try and kill his abusive dad, and Joey is sent on what will be the night from hell.I like the blue tint in the movie, it really gives the feel of the overall tone of the movie.
The cinematography of New Jersey gives the characters' foul mouthed background a lot more depth and style as he ventures to find the boy and his gun.Paul Walker gives an exceptional performance as the protagonist Gazelle, who's having a very bad day, or rather, night, similar to John McClane in the four Die Hard movies.
Paul Walker has certainly come a long way as far as acting goes since his days as Brian Spilner in Fast and The Furious (Into the Blue is also worth a watch).
Characters are introduced with no warning and disappear just as quickly, adding little to the story besides some laughably cheesy dialogue that leaves you honestly wondering how anyone would ever consider actually making this movie after reading the script ("I'm a mack daddy pimp and I'm gonna cap yo' ass!").Add this to a series of overblown, melodramatic shootouts with very little emotive value or explanation, leaving you honestly wondering how you go there and also who is on what side and why the two sides are fighting in the first place.
I went to see this movie expecting nothing more than an action flick involving the mob - Paul Walker trying to get some piece of evidence back.
Mix up a bunch of great movies such as A Clockwork Orange, Reservoir Dogs, Fight Club and more, add some David Fincher-style directing, and you've got Running Scared.
The trailers do a great job of hooking you with the "just an action flick" look, then surprises you with a huge storyline covering multiple characters, multiple subplots and some of the most _bizarre_ situations one could ever run into - in real life or in fiction.
The basic story, of a missing gun used in a drug confrontation between two groups of bad guys (of which there are many, many, many) and a bunch of cops, which is then used by a kid to shoot his stepfather, who belongs to another group of bad guys, the kid then going on the lam with the gun, which must be retrieved or Paul Walker, the foul-mouthed anti-hero who was supposed to dispose of it in the first place (can you follow this because believe me I'm simplifying!) passes from hand to hand in the most unlikely of circumstances with sleazier after sleazier characters.
This gun will come into possession of his sons best friend, who lives next door, which will take Joey (Walker) and Oleg (Cameron Bright) on a night long odyssey as Joey runs from his past while trying to avoid his future demise.
There is a pride factor Paul Walker exposes in his country that sums of the film as good as any other scene in the movie.
"Running Scared" is more than just a shoot-em- up action film, it bevels its way into the inner darkness of the world that we inhabit and it explores both the good and evil within a person, and sometimes there is no good.
The gun fights are amazing, they would drop John Woo's Jaw. I rewound the opening gun fight about 3x just to get all the details in.The characters are all top notch in great form and absolutely believable.The story was a work of art,and had some of the craziest subplots ever written into a movie.The production values, sets, and direction are all perfect in my opinion,everything fit perfectly.Johnny Messner was as charismatic and evil as they come, he played his roll to perfection.Paul Walker seems to be showing up in every movie coming out of Hollywood now day!
The only good Paul Walker movie I have seen was The Fast and the Furious, until i rented this (and when I rented it I didn't think it would be that good).
This movie is pure genius...it has everything you would want in a movie...cops, mafia, tons of action, twists and turns in the plot, vulgar language (some people like it) and very importantly..all around great acting, and yes i mean everyone's acting in this movie was incredible.
You actually feel like your a part of the events.I give this movie 10/10, because of the good script, the amazing actors and the unusual camera-work..
...or, as Paul Walker would say, "you've f***ng got to be f***ng kidding me, f**k!"DISCLAIMER: If you loved Running Scared, skip reading until the last paragraph.****You know a movie has little to say when the hero expresses despair by yelling the F word at the top of his lungs.
I was eager to see this film because it looked exciting; I had no idea who the director was, people were saying that Paul Walker was actually *good* in it, and overall it just looked like a fun thriller.Seriously now, people.
Paul Walker might be f**ng Michelangelo when it comes to waiting tables or working as a bouncer, but Hollywood ISN'T HIS SCENE!The plot is there...somewhere...something about a gun which Paul has to recover if he doesn't want to die, and some kid meeting hookers and pedophiles, and an abusive dad who likes John Wayne, and a mob boss...whatever.
I do, however, need some of the following (are you writing this down for your next project, Wayne?):1) Good actors (no where to be seen in this movie)2) A solid script (I mean, "a f***ng solid f***ng script!")3) Good direction (and by that I *don't* mean filming people's chins and cheeks at extreme closeups and putting a blue-gray filter over every single scene, Wayne!)Running Scared has none of these things.
What it does have is lots of badly filmed violence, lots of bad acting, lots of pseudo-controversy, lots of unbearable dialogue, lots of F-words, one of the worst kid actors in history (seriously, this guy makes the kids from Santa Clause Conquers the Martians look like Hayley Joel f***ng Osment!), and, well, a dude who's running scared.
Granted, Farmiga is the only bright spot in this hackneyed tale of action-crime stupidity, and with her superb performance in "Dummy", it is no wonder she found her way into Scorcese's "The Departed".What amazed me more than the complete disregard for police procedure, physics (when people get shot they do not get launched into the air, they just drop like a sack of spuds), and intelligent dialogue, every corner the characters turned led them into another aspect of the urban nightmare - to the absolute extreme.
I would have rated it a whole star higher if Oleg had been played better, and those ready to defend Paul Walker's performance should remember there is more to showing emotion than screaming and saying the f word 300 times.I really wanted to like this movie, but after having watched through the confusing story line and suffered through bad line after bad line, in the end Running Scared ultimately let me down.
He is just stunning here from start to end.Cameron Bright deserves huge applause for his portrayal of the abused Russian kid, and Vera Farmiga was impressive as Joey's wife, especially in the scene at the Pedophiles' apartment.The suspense is nearly unbearable for the whole length of the film, and as for my yardstick for any action thriller, it kept me riveted the whole time, with no thought of a snack or a pee break.
I don't normally get much enjoyment from this level of swearing, but here it was right at home in the storyline.The camera-work was dangerously close at times to going over the top, but fortunately the director seemed to know when enough would be too much and managed to rein it in on time.And the icing on the cake for me was the twisty-turny surprise ending, which I'm certainly not going to give away here.So, take it from me: I am not an easy viewer to please, and this is the best movie of its genre I've seen for years..
For his last movies he got a lot critics but in Running Scared he shows everybody what an excellent actor he is.
If you are in the mood for blood, violence, guns and a lot of action then go and watch the movie.
One of the best actors of his time.Running Scared is a bloody good time of an action movie..
This movie is full of really great bits, of surprising twists, good hard "real" action (not the computer game stuff), manly good acting and an above all a good story.
By the end of the film I was only wondering why they would waste so many good ideas to make a confusing movie.
Paul Walker plays a brilliant "fall guy" character, who has depth and believability, something that is lacking in roles of this sort of late.You could compare this to such films as 'Training Day', 'Sin City' and 'Scarface' but these films lack something this great piece of work has, EVERYTHING YOUR LOOKING FOR.
I will always keep this movie close to my heart it has inspired me to one day write and direct a great film like this one..
the story was good some really good plot twists some of it is so r rated that it makes other films like it look like a kid movie and the acting is so well done.
Films like Running Scared are the reason I watch movies.
Pretty graphic scenes and strong language, enough to develop the plot and characters, but not done to excess like some movies.
anyhow Kramer's direction and writing is flawless, this is one of the best films of 2005, a real suspenseful action thriller, good ones don't come out in this genre too much anymore.
From start to finish Running Scared was like a roller coaster ride of a movie.
Running Scared is a terrifying and dark action movie about a man, Joey, who is being slowly betrayed by the mob he works for.
Joey, his wife, and his son together try to find Oleg and instead find out some more interesting information instead.Running Scared was an extremely scary movie in my opinion and one of the most intense I've seen in my life.
One of the best Action movies I've seen in a long time.