Running Scared (1986)
(In French, On TV, March 2019) So, there was apparently an effort in the mid-1980s to make Billy Crystal an action-comedy star? Well, why not: it was his biggest decade on the big screen, and who can blame studios for trying all sorts of things? He certainly won’t be remembered for Running Scared, a standard 1980s buddy-cop film in which our two cowboy cop heroes go around Chicago shooting and blowing up everything the producers could afford. It even comes with all the banter, police brutality, car chases and Uzi-toting drug dealers they could round up. Casting is hit and miss: While Crystal is fine with the banter, his limitations as an action hero are apparent, while the well-matched Gregory Hines does very little tap-dancing but feels significantly more rounded both on the comedy and the action side. Still, there’s enough blood and mayhem to prevent Running Scared from being a pure comedy: With Jimmy Smits on drug dealer role duties, the film does often feel a bit too spread between its successful comic dialogue (even awkwardly translated in French) and its less-successful action beats. Director Peter Hyams makes good use of the Chicago setting with a chase sequence involving the El, but on the flip side he ends up using some of the worst snow ever put in a studio film. There’s little point in getting incensed about it, or any other aspect of Running Scared’s production: the film feels forgettable even as you watch it, and it probably would have been completely forgotten if it wasn’t for Crystal headlining.
