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Rating: Beyond Travis Bickle, Sam "Ace" Rothstein, Jimmy Conway, or Michael Vronsky, Robert De Niro has always done comedies. For about fifteen years now, he's been causing dissatisfaction and accusations of betrayal for falling into poor projects like the "Meet the Parents" series, "Analyze This," "Stardust" (actually a great unfinished work), up to the latest slip with "Manuale d'amore 3," but Martin Scorsese's former protégé has always dealt with light-weight films (remember "We're No Angels," "Night and the City," or "Mad Dog and Glory," to name a few).
Take this "Midnight Run" from 1988, not very well-known, and you will discover again the time when Robert De Niro was monumental even while acting in a low-carat movie. The role he plays here is that of Jack Walsh, a former cop ousted from the Chicago police force for not being bought by boss Jimmy Serrano (Dennis Farina), a drug trafficker he was trying to bust; Walsh now lives in Los Angeles and makes money as a bounty hunter for Eddy Mascone's (Joe Pantoliano) agency, who one day offers him a hundred thousand dollars to find Jonathan Mardukas (an excellent Charles Grodin), accused of money laundering, and bring him back before midnight on Friday. The job itself seems like a piece of cake, so much so that Jack Walsh immediately finds out where the Duke is hiding (this is the nickname Mardukas is known by), goes to New York to capture him without too much trouble, and heads straight to the airport to catch the first flight to Los Angeles—a flight they will never take due to a simulated aviophobia by the prisoner. From here begin the misadventures that will lead a tenacious Walsh to use any means of transport possible to arrive on time on the West Coast, and during the long journey, the relationship between the jailer and the prisoner will become increasingly familiar, aided by the Duke's good and harmless nature which will reveal to be connected to Chicago boss Serrano, from whom he stole 15 million dollars to then donate to charity. Of course, complications will not be missing as besides Mascone, many are interested in Mandukas, the first of whom is Serrano himself, who wants to take revenge for the theft years before.
Martin Brest (future director of "Scent Of A Woman" with Al Pacino) directs here an exemplary road movie, mixing action, comedy, and moralistic hints at a rhythm constantly kept at high levels, always adding more strands to a plot that actually presents all elements already seen before, but presents them in an absolutely brilliant way. The film is indeed based on the classic relationship between two people with contrasting characters but forced by circumstances to live and work together: Robert De Niro is the classic tough guy with a soft heart, instinctive, grumpy, clever out of desperation, disillusioned but never short on irony while Charles Grodin appears to be a nice guy, a big teddy bear, but with a gift of gab that often gets on his partner's nerves, and it's this weapon he relies on to hope for a release from his fate. The action is abundant and completely free of violence, the irony of the splendid (here indeed) protagonist dominates everything and flavors dialogues that seem studied syllable by syllable. And there is also room for a small sentimental parenthesis when the two fugitives visit Walsh's ex-family, further showing the goodness of the prisoner and the tenderness that the jailer hides under his leather jacket. We miss you, Bob.
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