Part of Staff Picks and programmed by Will, who says: “MIDNIGHT RUN, above all, is a great time! I’m a sucker for a cross-country roadtrip, enemies to friends buddy comedy and MIDNIGHT RUN delivers with a ridiculous soundtrack to boot. Cheeky De Niro gives bonus points!”
Tue, May 13 at 8:00pm: Staff Pick introduction from Will
Jack Walsh (Robert De Niro) is a tough ex-cop turned bounty hunter. Jonathan “The Duke” Mardukas (Charles Grodin) is a sensitive accountant who embezzled $15 million from the mob, gave it to charity, and then jumped bail. Jack’s in for a cool $100,000 if he can deliver The Duke from New York to L.A. on time — and alive. Sounds like just another “Midnight Run” (a piece of cake in bounty hunter slang), but it turns into a cross-country chase. The FBI wants The Duke to testify, the mob wants him for revenge, and Walsh wants him to just shut up. If someone else doesn’t do the job, the two unlikely partners may end up killing each other in this hilarious, action-filled ride from producer-director Martin Brest (BEVERLY HILLS COP).
“Whoever cast De Niro and Grodin must have had a sixth sense for the chemistry they would have; they work together so smoothly, and with such an evident sense of fun, that even their silences are intriguing…. What MIDNIGHT RUN does with these two characters is astonishing, because it’s accomplished within the structure of a comic thriller…. It’s rare for a thriller to end with a scene of genuinely moving intimacy, but this one does, and it earns it.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (Jul 20, 1988) “One of the most entertaining, best executed, original road pictures ever…. It is a terrifically developed script full of inventive, humorous twists made even funnier by wonderfully realized secondary characters.” —Variety (Dec 31, 1987) “De Niro is nervily hilarious and Grodin nervelessly exceptional in MIDNIGHT RUN, a formula buddy movie exalted to insta-classic status by their performances.” —Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer
