Stubs - Running Scared

Running Scared (1986) Starring: Gregory Hines, Billy Crystal, Jimmy Smits, Dan Hedaya, Joe Pantoliano. Directed by Peter Hyams. Screenplay by Gary DeVore, Jimmy Huston. Produced by David Foster, Lawrence Turman Run Time: 107 USA Color. Action, Comedy, Christmas, Buddy Cop

In 1986, MGM, once the gold standard of the major Hollywood studios, was in the midst of another sale, this time the former owner Kirk Kerkorian was buying it back from the current owner, Turner Broadcasting. The studio was starting over this time unburdened by the actual studio lot, now Sony Pictures, and that pesky library of classic films including Gone With The Wind (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939). One of the first films produced by the “new” MGM was Running Scared, a buddy cop film starring Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal.

Hines, a dancer turned actor, and Crystal, a stand-up comedian turned actor, were paired together for the first and only time. Hines, whose first screen appearance was in Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I (1981), had appeared in about a half-dozen films before Running Scared. Crystal, who had a BFA from NYU in film and television directing, had made a name for himself as a stand-up comic before his first film, Joan River’s Rabbit Test (1978) and as Jodie Dallas on Soap, a TV Series that ran from 1977 to 1981. His only other film prior to Running Scared had been a small part in This Is Spinal Tap (1984) as Morty the mime.

Danny Costanzo (Billy Crystal) and Ray Hughes (Gregory Hines) are undercover
at the beginning of Running Scared.

It is winter in Chicago and Ray Hughes (Hines) and Danny Costanzo (Crystal) are two police officers known for their wisecracking demeanors and unorthodox police methods. When the film opens, they are working undercover on the city's North Side, staking out Julio Gonzales (Jimmy Smits), a drug dealer who has only recently gotten out of prison but is still an up and comer in the Chicago underworld. Even though they are on a stakeout, Danny gets them involved in a pickup game of basketball as a couple of uninvited and unwelcomed additions. Danny is even punched by one of the other players. But before anything else can happen, they see Gonzales drive up.

When Gonzales sees them, he flees, leaving one of his associates, Snake (Joe Pantoliano), high and dry. Ray and Danny manage to catch up to him, gaining entrance to his apartment and looking through the briefcase he’s been clutching. Inside, they find $50,000 cash. While they don’t have anything on Snake, they make it difficult on him by announcing to a group of men playing basketball next door to his apartment that he has the money. In the end, he begs them to take him in. They stop on the way to attend Danny’s Aunt’s funeral.

With their prisoner, Snake (Joe Pantoliano), in tow, Ray and Danny are almost mugged.

Immediately following the funeral, as if to emphasize the dangerous streets of Chicago, Ray and Danny, with Snake still handcuffed to them, are held up by a pair of inept thugs. Ray hands him his wallet, telling them they can take the money, but they need to keep their badges. The two assailants then run away.

At the station, Danny is confronted by a lawyer (Don Calfa) and by his ex-wife Anna (Darlanne Fluegel), whom he still loves. Ray pretends to be Danny to draw the lawyer away and give him some time alone with Anna. But the news is not what Danny expects, as she informs him that she’s getting married again, this time to a dentist. Danny’s mood is somewhat lightened when Ray tells him that the lawyer was there to let him know he was inheriting $40,000 from his recently deceased Aunt.

Snake works with Julio Gonzales (Jimmy Smits) to set Ray and Danny up.

They convince Snake to wear a wire to his rendezvous later that night with Gonzales. While they expect Snake to be buying drugs for Gonzales, when they approach the meeting place (a cargo ship), they discover that he’s buying a large store of Israeli Uzi submachine guns. When they hear what sounds like Snake in trouble, they walk into a trap that Snake and Gonzales have set for them.

Gonzales reveals his ambition to be the first Latino "godfather" of Chicago. Gonzales has Snake killed for bringing the detectives in the first place. It looks as though Ray and Danny will be killed before two undercover detectives in Julio’s gang, Anthony Montoya (Jon Gries) and Frank Sigliano (Steven Bauer), step in to make the arrest. In the ensuing gun battle, several of Gonzales’ gang members are killed or escape. While Montoya and Sigliano only manage to arrest a subordinate, Danny and Ray capture Gonzales.

Captain Logan (Dan Hedaya) encourages Ray and Danny to take a vacation.

Back at the station, Ray and Danny expect to be praised, but instead, their supervisor Captain Logan (Dan Hedaya) chastises them for their sloppy work (as revealed by Snake’s wire). He orders them to take a vacation and the boys are reluctant to go.

Ray and Danny find that they love Key West and plan to move there.

But down in Key West, Florida, the pair see a different side of life. A slower pace, taking time to watch sunsets, not to mention the beautiful women in bikinis with their flat stomachs and perky breasts. They begin to question their career choices and decide to retire and buy a bar using Danny’s inheritance along with their pension fund from the Chicago Police Department.

Gonzales gets away and leaves Ray and Danny pantsless.

Upon their return to Chicago, they inform Captain Logan of their intentions and also find out that Gonzales has been released and is free on bail. Incensed, they vow to capture Gonzales before retiring, but by being a little more careful in the process. They stake out Gonzales Mercedes and use yellow spray paint used to deface their unmarked police car to create a loading zone. As a result, they can get the car towed. They watch to see who will go to inform Gonzales and follow a small boy to the apartment, where Gonzales had been in bed with the boy’s mother. After subduing his crew, they chase after Gonzales, who is pantsless. He takes a hostage and demands Ray and Harry give him one of their pants. Ray is very reluctant but ends up giving up his, when Harry’s pants fall out of Gonzales’ reach. With the pants, Gonzales gets away, stealing their car in the process.

Captain Logan wants Ray and Danny to train Anthony Montoya (Jon Gries)
and Frank Sigliano (Steven Bauer) before they retire to Florida.

When they get back to the station, not only are they the butt of jokes, but Captain Logan adds insult to injury by assigning them to train their replacements, detectives Montoya and Sigliano, none other than the two undercover officers that saved them from being killed in the Gonzales bust. Logan wants the replacements to be "the best of the worst" and orders them never to let him catch them doing anything Ray and Danny teach them. Ray and Danny do their best to avoid actually working with the two detectives.

Gonzales uses a priest and a nun as drug mules.

Gonzales manages to outsmart much of the Chicago PD by staging a fake smuggling operation but bringing the coke in using other mules. While everyone else is fooled by the tactic, Ray and Danny intercept the mules, a priest and a nun, and confiscate a large amount of Gonzales’ cocaine.

In order to get it back, Gonzales kidnaps Anna and will trade her for the cocaine. He sets the location as the James R. Thompson Center, a tall glass state government building with a large open atrium. He warns that Danny comes alone. First, they have to get the cocaine out of the evidence locker, which takes Danny imitating Captain Lewis to the sergeant in charge.

The climactic scene of Running Scared takes place in the lobby of the James
R. Thompson Center. Note the large Christmas tree in the atrium.

Ray, of course, backs up his partner, taking an alternative way into the building. He discovers that all of the state troopers on duty have been taken hostage and replaced by Gonzales’ men. The only way which Ray can get in unobserved involves hoisting himself the way a window cleaner would. During the ensuing gunfight, Montoya and Sigliano, not wanting to be left out of the bust, follow Ray and Danny, but get pinned down in the crossfire. Danny and Ray ironically rescue their would-be protégés in a way similar to their own rescuing at the beginning of the film. All of Gonzales’ men are killed and after more gunfighting, so is Gonzales. Anna and Danny reconcile and he and Ray decide not to retire after all. The city needs them.

Released June 27, 1986, the film would do well at the box-office, bringing in a less than spectacular $38.5 million domestically.

The comedic approach differentiates Running Scared from these other films. Not only are Ray and Danny friends off-duty, but the actors who play them seem to have a very good screen rapport.

Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal are both quite watchable together and I would have watched them in other films had that ever materialized. Not only does Crystal have good comedic-timing, but so does Hines, which is a pleasant surprise for someone who did not come up through the stand-up ranks. These two carry the film, they have to, but they make it look like they’re having a good time while they do.

There are several elements that seem to link Running Scared to other similar-themed films during the 1980s, including Lethal Weapon (1987) and Die Hard (1988). For one, all three are set around Christmastime (note the Christmas Tree and fake presents in the James R. Thompson Center atrium). The holiday takes a backseat here and is never called out like it is the other two films, but it’s still part of the environment.

Something else that links the three films is the appearance by Al Leong as a henchman. Not that I mean to call out this actor in particular, but I find it interesting he is always seen in the background holding an automatic weapon in all three.

The supporting actors are rather one-dimensional and stereotypical. Dan Hedaya and Jimmy Smits are both very capable actors and could have done more with better-drawn characters. Instead, Hedaya’s Captain Logan is exactly what you’d expect of a policeman in his position. He’s tough but fair and little else. Smits’ Gonzales is a typical ruthless gangster who is no subtler than the machine gun he’s holding.

The love interests are fine. Tracy Reed plays Maryann, a woman that Ray is involved with, but superfluous to the plot. Again, not much else for her to do. Darlanne Fluegel as Anna Costanzo, Danny’s ex, is more important to the story, but she is still a bit of a cardboard character.

There are other weaknesses to the film, beginning with its really bad opening theme song. It is everything that a theme song should not be, one that is immediately forgettable. For the most part, the soundtrack music is also quite vanilla.

The film seems to have a slightly long third act and ends in what is now a cliché, though considered necessary, big gun battle finish. While the damage is not as severe as say Die Hard, which pretty much obliterated the fictitious Nakatomi Plaza, the big shootout in Running Scared is quite deadly as the corpses seem to pile up. (It is interesting that another buddy cop film, Rush Hour (1998), also ends in a similar fashion, replacing James R. Thompson Center with the LA Convention Center.) Our heroes don’t seem to be affected by the body count, which is also par for the course of this genre of films.

For the most part, I liked the film. Hines and Crystal had the makings of a really good film team. It’s too bad that this one never repeated. If you’re looking for a fun two hours and can get past the obvious 80’s trappings, then Running Scared is not a bad way to spend your time.

To read reviews of other Christmas films, please see our Christmas Review Hub.

Stubs - Lethal Weapon

Lethal Weapon (1987) Starring: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Gary Busey Director: Richard Donner. Screenplay by Shane Black. Produced by Richard Donner, Joel Silver. Run Time: 110. U.S. Action, Buddy Cop, Christmas

It may be hard to believe for some, but there was once a time when Mel Gibson was considered a popular and non-controversial figure in Hollywood. An American, Gibson had found fame in Australia, where his family had moved when he was a boy. He had become an International star following Mad Max (1979) directed by George Miller and would continue to appear in such films as Gallipoli (1981); Mad Max 2 (1981); The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) and The Bounty (1984) before coming to Hollywood in 1984. While he would continue to live and make films in Australia like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), he would tend to become a fixture in American films.

A sex symbol as well as being perceived as a man’s man, Gibson would become a major star. One of those films that shows that is Lethal Weapon. His co-star was Danny Glover, an actor who had been in films since 1979’s Escape from Alcatraz, but who had only starred in one movie, The Color Purple (1985), in his career. Based on a script by recent UCLA graduate Shane Black, Warner Bros. originally thought about giving the film to actor turned director Leonard Nimoy, but Nimoy was already working on a film, Three Men and a Baby (1987), and didn’t feel comfortable making an action film. Richard Donner was given the script. Bruce Willis was considered for what would become Gibson’s role, but he would make his own cop film the next year, Die Hard.

Donner wanted Gibson, having worked together on Ladyhawke (1985), and casting director Marion Dougherty suggested teaming him with Glover. Things were cemented in a script reading with the two actors and both signed on in early Spring of 1986. Added to the mix was Gary Busey, who had been a star since playing the lead in The Buddy Holly Story (1978). Busey had not had to audition for a role since but wanted the opportunity to play a villain.

Filming got underway in Los Angeles on August 6, 1986, with a budget of $15 million. Shooting would take place in and around the city, including Long Beach, Palos Verdes, Santa Monica, Studio City, West Hollywood, Inglewood, El Mirage, Victorville as well as the backlot facilities of Burbank studios. It would go into release on March 6, 1987.

Amanda Hunsaker (Jackie Swanson) before she jumps to her death.

It is a few days before Christmas in Los Angeles when the story opens. Inside a highrise apartment, Amanda Hunsaker (Jackie Swanson) lies half-dressed and in a stupor. After doing a couple of lines of coke, she crawls out on to the railing of the balcony and then throws herself over, landing dead on the roof of one of the cars down below.

After Amanda jumps.

The next morning, Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover), a homicide detective for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), is taking a luxurious bath when it is interrupted by his wife and children who bring him a cake for his fiftieth birthday.

Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) is surprised by his family to celebrate his 50th birthday.

At breakfast, Roger’s wife, Trish (Darlene Love), tells him that a man named Michael Hunsaker has been trying to reach him for several days. Roger recognizes the name but tells her it’s been twelve years since he has spoken to Hunsaker. They had both fought together in the Vietnam War.

On duty, Roger is called to the scene of Amanda’s suicide and is introduced to Dixie (Lycia Naff), a prostitute who witnessed Amanda’s jump. When Roger learns the victim’s name, he realizes she is Michael Hunsaker’s daughter.

Meanwhile, Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) is undercover at a Christmas Tree lot where he attempts to buy coke from the lot operator. When he reveals himself as an LAPD officer, a gunfight ensues. Martin shoots three of the four drug dealers before backup arrives. While they’re looking for the ringleader, Martin is taken hostage. Martin dares the man to shoot before disarming him.

Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) makes an undercover buy at a Christmas Tree lot.

That night, alone in his mobile home at the beach, Martin contemplates suicide. After staring at a picture of his deceased wife, he loads a single bullet into his gun and puts it into his mouth before stopping himself.

The next day, Roger learns from Boyette (Grand Bush) that Amanda’s case is now being investigated as a murder because the drugs she took were laced with toxic drain cleaner, and evidence shows that someone was in bed with her just before she died.

Roger is not happy to learn who his new partner is.

Roger also learns that he is getting a new partner, but before they are formally introduced, he sees Martin, who is sitting outside his office, holding a gun. Mistaking him for a criminal, Roger tries to tackle and disarm Martin, but an expert fighter, Martin overpowers him within seconds. Roger really feels too old for this shit now.

Later, as they leave the office, Martin explains that his superiors believe he is either insane or pretending to be insane in order to receive a pension, and therefore no one wants to work with him. Roger complains that he doesn’t want to work with him either.

Roger meets with the victim's father, Michael Hunsaker (Tom Atkins).

At a meeting the next day with Michael Hunsaker (Tom Atkins), Roger learns that Amanda had been involved in pornography. Hunsaker is distraught and asks Roger to kill the people responsible for her death. Hunsaker insists that Roger owes him one. Roger refuses but later tells Martin that Hunsaker saved his life in the Vietnam War.

That afternoon, Martin and Roger are called to the scene of a suicide attempt, where a man named McCleary (Michael Shaner) is standing on the ledge of a tall building. Even though neither is trained to handle such matters, Roger lets Martin go up to try to talk McCleary down.

Martin handcuffs himself to a possible suicide (Michael Shaner) and then they both jump.

Martin eventually handcuffs himself to McCleary, warning him that jumping would drag them both down and thus be a murder and a suicide. When McCleary refuses to leave the ledge, Martin pushes him and they both leap at the same time. However, by then, a large air cushion has been set up below and they fall into it safely.

Roger, however, is not happy and confronts Martin about his risky behavior. Martin reveals that he is suicidal, but that his love for police work has prevented him from killing himself.

Next, the two go to the home of Amanda’s “sugar daddy,” who is also a suspect in her murder. But they are met with gunfire and while Roger doesn’t want to kill the suspect, Martin has to do so to save Roger from being shot.

That night, Martin joins Roger’s family for dinner and tells Roger that he doubts the sugar daddy was the killer. The two spend time together on Roger’s fishing boat. After a few beers, Martin leaves, but not before he reveals that he was a sniper in the Vietnam War and believes that shooting was his only great skill.

Roger later finds an evidence package addressed to him containing Amanda’s high school yearbook and a pornographic videotape she made with other women.

The next morning, Roger is awakened by Martin who proposes that Dixie, the prostitute who witnessed Amanda’s fall, was also her killer.

Martin and Roger stop at a shooting range for no real reason.

But before they go, they stop at a firing range and both men try to show their prowess with a gun. This is a continuation of sorts of the conversation they had the night before. While Roger is good, Martin is far better, shooting rings around his partner.

When they arrive at a suspect's house, it explodes.

When they finally arrive at Dixie’s house to interview her, the building explodes. Martin finds a trigger device amongst the wreckage, which he recognizes as the same kind used by mercenaries during the Vietnam War. Neighborhood kids who witnessed the explosion tell the detectives that they saw a man at the gas meter outside Dixie’s house earlier that day, and he had a tattoo that matches the one on Martin’s arm. Martin explains that the tattoo means their suspect was in the Special Forces.

They next go to Hunsaker’s home, where Roger proposes to Hunsaker that his involvement in criminal activity is what got his daughter killed and that her murderer was Dixie, who was paid to poison her. Hunsaker admits to being part of a heroin smuggling operation with several other veterans who were part of Shadow Company, a special unit of mercenaries and assassins formed during the Vietnam War.

Just then, a helicopter flies past the house, and Hunsaker is shot and killed by Joshua (Gary Busey), one of the mercenaries from Hunsaker’s drug ring. That night, while Martin and Roger seek out Dixie on the streets, Joshua drives past and shoots, seemingly killing Martin. But when Roger goes to investigate, he finds that Martin is wearing a bulletproof vest that saves his life.

Only moments later, Roger gets word that there has been a killing near his house and rushes home to find that his oldest daughter, Rianne (Traci Wolfe), has been kidnapped. Mercenaries from the drug ring call, ordering him to go to Dry Lake in Victorville, California, at sunrise, saying they only want the information that Hunsaker gave him.

Roger and Martin develop a plan to retrieve Rianne safely, knowing that Joshua believes Martin is dead. The next morning, Roger drops Martin off on the outskirts of the dry lakebed, then confronts the mercenaries, who arrive with a limousine, a truck, and a helicopter full of armed men.

Mercenaries overwhelm Roger and Martin on a dry lakebed.

Roger threatens the mercenaries with a smoke grenade, and the distraction allows Martin to begin sniping from across the lakebed. Just as Martin is getting aim on Joshua, he is stopped by the ringleader of the drug cartel, General McAllister (Mitchell Ryan), which leads to Martin and Roger being captured.

Joshua (Gary Busey) enjoys torturing Martin.

In the back of a nightclub, the mercenaries torture Martin and Roger in separate rooms, trying to find out what Hunsaker revealed about the details of an upcoming heroin deal. Even though he’s strapped and hanging from the wall, Martin kills his torturer, Endo (Al Leong). Afterward, he shoots his way through the building, saving both Roger and Rianne in the process.

Martin takes after Joshua on foot through the streets of Hollywood.

Joshua hijacks a car and flees the scene. Martin gives chase on foot but loses him on the freeway. Meanwhile, Roger shoots the driver of a car containing the mercenaries' leader, General McAllister, causing the car to run into a bus and explode.

Martin and Joshua settle things with a fistfight in front of Roger's house while other cops watch.

Roger figures out that Joshua is headed to his house and the two hurry to thwart him. Joshua breaks in, but there is no one home. That is until Roger and Martin drive their car into the house. They manage to disarm Joshua. But before arresting him, Martin challenges Joshua to a fistfight. While police surround the area, the two men go at it. After an extensive fight, Martin beats Joshua, but Joshua doesn’t give up, instead he steals a police officer’s gun. But before he can shoot anyone, both Martin and Roger shoot him dead.

On Christmas Eve, Martin delivers flowers to his dead wife's grave and then stops by Roger’s house. Rianne, who has a crush on Martin, answers the door. He gives her the bullet which he almost used to kill himself to give her father, signifying that he is no longer suicidal.

But before he can leave, Roger hurries out and insists that Martin stay for Christmas dinner.

The film opened on March 6, 1987 and went on to make $120.2 million at the box office. A very good return on the $15 million-dollar budget. So good in fact, that it would spawn not just one sequel, but three: Lethal Weapon 2 (1989); Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) and Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) as well as a TV series, cleverly enough also called Lethal Weapon. The critical response at the time was fair, if not overly, positive and the film even garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound.

On the surface, the film has a lot in common with Die Hard, the least of which is that Bruce Willis was almost in it. Both films deal with cops in trouble, families threatened, violent money-hungry gangs, big fight scenes that close the movie as well as a blonde-haired antagonist that refuses to give up, even after losing the penultimate conflict, and is shot dead to end the threat. In Die Hard, it was Alexander Godunov as Karl; here it is Gary Busey as Joshua. In addition, both films exude an 80’s feel, especially when it comes to the technology of the day. When Roger talks on a portable phone in Lethal Weapon, it is more akin to the field radios they used in World War Two to that mobile device in your pocket. To top it off, there are two actors in this film that also appear in Die Hard: Grand Bush, who here plays Boyette and is FBI Agent Little Johnson in Die Hard; and Al Leong, here Endo and in Die Hard, he played one of the terrorists, Uli.

Al Leong (Endo) plays a similar role in Die Hard.

Also, like Die Hard, the heroes never have a moment to take a breath and seem to recover from their wounds with great speed. Martin goes literally from being tortured while strung up to running full speed down the middle of the street after Joshua, who is driving a speeding car. This is just one example of how once the film gets going it never stops as plot points reveal themselves one after another.

At the heart of the buddy cop film is the cliché partnering a by-the-books cop, Roger, with a cop who plays by his own rules, Martin. You see this over and over again, one of the more recent examples is Zootopia (2016), an animated take on the genre. It is no accident that Roger is also a happily-married family man and Martin is a tinderbox ready to explode. Don’t fault the film for going there, since it is one of the hallmarks of these kinds of films. How dull would it be if both followed the rules, or how chaotic if they both played things by the seat of their pants? For their roles, Glover and Gibson seem to be well cast.

Gibson does have one very dramatic scene, the one in which he contemplates suicide one night in his trailer by the ocean. It is a very powerful scene for this kind of movie and shows what Gibson was capable of providing as an actor. Not really sure if he had the credentials to be a really great dramatic actor. His turn as Hamlet (1991) and the only $20 million it made at the box-office might be evidence that the world wasn’t looking for him to play those kinds of roles.

There are some parts of the movie that get somewhat tiresome, especially the rather long fight scene at the end of the film between Martin and Joshua. Not only does this scene have no real point, other than to show how macho the two men are, but it goes on far too long. At some point, one of the other would have either passed out or given up, but not these two. No matter how much punishment they each dish out, they are both ready for more. It finally takes bullets, not fists or kicks, to stop Joshua, the Energizer Bunny of villains.

Not everything in Lethal Weapon is believable. To begin with, the murder/suicide that starts the film. No one coaxes her to go out on the ledge and her suicide seems more akin to a bad acid trip than a cocaine high (or so I’ve heard). But you get the sense we see it because it’s a way to be more over the top and to throw in a little gratuitous nudity. So much cooler for her to die on top of a car than on the couch. I also get the sense that we have the big showdown in a dry lake bed for the same reason. You can almost hear that as part of the pitch, “It’ll be so cool…” Ditto blowing up the house. How exactly would Joshua know the exact time Roger and Martin were going to show up? But isn’t it cool…

Overall though, I would have to recommend this film. For the most part, it is very entertaining. Fast-paced and never really slows down, Lethal Weapon still gives the audience a real sense of who our main characters, Roger and Martin, are. This is something oftentimes overlooked in many summer films. Knowing them makes you more empathetic to them, which is something missing from a lot of films these days.

To read reviews of other Christmas films, please see our Christmas Review Hub.