I grew up in the 1980s, so I heard a lot of pop hits that came from movie soundtracks where I was too young to see the movie in the theater on first release. One such song was Michael McDonald's Sweet Freedom, which came from a movie called Running Scared. I recently noticed that the movie was on one or another of the streaming platforms, so I sat down to watch it and do a post on it here.
In Chicago, Ray Hughes (Gregory Hines) and Danny Costanza (Billy Crystal) are a pair of cops partnered and working on the north side of the city to find illicit drugs. Despite trying to make nice with the law-abiding citizens, everybody knows they're cops even when they're undercover, and don't seem to do much to help them. They've got word of Snake (Joe Pantoliano) bringing in some drugs for the higher-level drug dealer Gonzales (Jimmy Smits), and use the sort of unorthodox tactics typical for a movie like this to try to get at Snake. Needless to say, such tactics get them in repeated trouble with their superiors.
The two cops try to turn Snake against Gonzales, and even get him to wear a wire as part of an undercover drug bust, but what they don't realizes is that the Feds are already working on a case against Gonzales, and they've got their own officers on that case. So when extra people show up when Snake is wired, Ray and Danny don't realize that some of these are Feds trying to bring down Gonzales and all hell breaks loose.
Their supervisor responds by putting them on a forced vacation, which at least isn't as bad as administrative leave. Still, if they get their time in they'll be eligible for that fat government pension that's bankrupting states and municipalities and which we have to pay to those ingrateful bastards. Anyhow, Ray and Danny vacation together in Key West Florida; since it's winter, they like the change of climate. Enough, in fact, that they think about retiring then and there even though they only have a year or two left before they can claim that sweet sweet pension.
Even if they want to retire, however, they can't just up and quit as they've got cases with loose ends, including the Gonzales case. And wouldn't you know, they're going to have to train up the two officers they first met in that undercover incident where Snake was wearing the wire. Things get more complicated when Ray and Danny wind up with a shipment of cocaine Gonzales was bringing in from Colombia, and Gonzales responds by kidnapping Danny's ex wife.
The plot to Running Scared isn't quite so important, since in a buddy-cop movie like this a lot of the movie is about the chemistry between the two cops. Here, Hines and Crystal actually have pretty good chemistry. Sure, the plot is formulaic, but it's just about entertaining enough to watch if you want something that's not overly demanding. Better still, get a couple of friends and a bowl of popcorn and have a nice evening in watching this one. It's cheaper than going out to today's movies, and not a comic book superhero movie, either.
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