Midnight Run

 

Released fairly deep into an ’80s run of action-driven buddy comedies, Midnight Run is one of the very best, thanks mainly to the central relationship between chatty mob accountant Jonathan “The Duke” Mardukas (Charles Grodin), who embezzled millions from a Chicago mobster and skipped out on his $450,000 bail, and terse, brutal bounty hunter Jack Walsh (Robert DeNiro), who’s been hired to nab the The Duke and bring him in. Written by George Gallo (29th St.) and directed by Martin Brest (Going in Style, Scent of a Woman), it’s a rollicking chase that follows Jack and the Duke from Chicago International Airport, where the accountant gets them ejected from a plane by declaring that he has multiple phobias (“You’re gonna suffer from fistophobia if you don’t shut the f*** up,” Walsh snarls), through the American Midwest and Southwest by car, freight train, and on foot. This is the first Hollywood blockbuster to properly showcase DeNiro’s chops as a knockabout comedian in an Abbott-and-Costello vein, but it’s Grodin’s alternately snide, probing, and openhearted reactions to his costar’s fits of rage that make Midnight Run a classic film about friendship and a master class in comedy teamwork. The stacked supporting cast includes Yaphet Kotto, John Ashton, Joe Pantoliano, Fran Brill, Wendy Phillips and, as mob boss Jimmy Serrano, the great Dennis Farina, who should have gotten a special Oscar for Outstanding Achievement in Delivering Weird Threats. 

 

Presented as part of the series Movies with MZS – Spring 2023