Midnight Run

Another of the movies that's been sitting on my DVR for several months is another relatively recent movie, at least recent by the standards of this blog in that it was released in the summer of 1988: Midnight Run.

Robert De Niro stars as Jack Walsh, and as the movie opens he's trying to pick an apartment lock in a seedy part of Los Angeles, only for the person inside the apartment to shoot through the door at him and try to flee via the fire escape. Jack chases the guy down, but as he's doing so, another guy drives down the alley and opens his car door, deliberately hitting the fleeing suspect. Sounds like two undercover cops, but in fact they're not. Jack and the other guy, Marvin Dorfler (John Ashton), are rival bounty hunters. Jack generally works for bail bondsman Eddie Moscone (Joe Pantoliano), and the next time Jack meets up with Eddie, Eddie has another job for him.

Eddie provided a substantial bail bond for Jonathan "The Duke" Mardukas (Charles Grodin), an accountant who is alleged to have stolen several millions of dollars that were illegal profits for mobster Jimmy Serrano (Dennis Farina). The feds need Duke out in Los Angeles for an upcoming trial, while obviously Serrano would like Duke really most sincerely dead. In any case, Duke fled bail and went to New York, stiffing Eddie on that bail bond. So Eddie would like Jack to fly out to New York, pick up Duke, and fly him back to Los Angeles. It's so easy, it's a "midnight run" since they can just take a redeye back to Los Angeles. Jack wants a substantial sum himself, since he has the good sense to understand it's not going to be so easy.

Jack is, of course, right. And the problems start even before he gets to New York. While doing a bit of research on where in New York to find Duke, Jack is accosted by the FBI, in a group of agents headed by Alzono Mosely (Yaphet Kotto). They want Duke as a witness to testify in that trial, while they also can plausibly tell Jack that he's putting himself in danger by trying to fetch Duke in addition to screwing up the pursuit of real justice. Jack sees dollar signs and a chance at redemption, since his back story involves quitting the police force in Chicago over corruption. Jack somehow steals Mosely's ID and uses that in his quest to get Duke and bring him back to LA.

Amazingly, the quest starts off relatively smoothly once Jack get to New York. He's able to tap into phones and get the location of Duke straight away, and even get Duke onto a plane relatively unseen. But then Duke says he's got a terrible fear of flying, and suffers a panic attack just before the plane takes off. The pilot forces Jack and Duke off the plane, and Jack has to try to get Duke across the country some other way. Further complicating matters, Feds have tapped the line at Eddie's bail bond office. Serrano has also figured out what's going on, and hires Dorfler to try to fetch Duke to bring him not to justice in Los Angeles, but to Serrano so that Serrano can dish out his own form of justice. And Serrano has no qualms about using violence against anybody.

As you can guess, the rest of the movie leads to a cross-country chase, with added shades of the buddy picture genre as the wildly different Jack and Duke begin to develop a bit of respect for each other. Jack, at least, seems to be the one person who wants to keep Duke alive, even if it's only for his own selfish monetary purposes. You can probably deduce that Jack is likely to make it back to Los Angeles as Hollywood wouldn't make a movie that has some unhappy ending, at least not in this genre.

Midnight Run is not exactly a movie I would call "unoriginal", since that work carries a lot of negative connotations. And that would be mean to the movie. Sure, it's not breaking any new ground, but damn if it isn't terribly entertaining for what it does. Midnight Run isn't exactly a comedy, but it's definitely a light action picture, and who knew Robert De Niro of Yaphet Kotto were adept at comedy?

Midnight Run is also a movie that, being of the genre it is, has a lot of plot holes and things that you'd think should make Jack's journey end right then and there. (He only carries one credit card, and the issuer has such lax security for cancelling it? Both of those set of my sense that this isn't right.) But if you don't think too hard, the movie is a lot of fun, and definitely worth watching.