Disc Reviews

Midnight Run Blu-ray Review

• 13th Apr 2015

Martin Brest answered the Beverly Hills Cop success with this late 80’s buddy movie starring Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin.

Foul mouthed bounty hunter Jack Walsh (De Niro) captures mild mannered laundryman Jonathan Mardukas (Grodin) and after a Rain Man-esque fit over flying he is resolved to taking his bounty back by land all the way back to LA in order to make the bail bond on him Mardukas. Of course he didn’t factor in the FBI, fellow bounty hunters and the mob being on their tail all of the way there. Not to mention Mardukas grinding his gears all of the way there over every little thing.

Midnight Run hasn’t dated as well as Beverly Hills Cop. It has a very cheesy (and repetitive) music score that only an 80’s caper movie could love. The light heartedness of the violence is also very much of the era. But what makes the film still warm your heart and tickle your bones is the relationships that characters have with one and other. De Niro and Grodin are well matched with each other – but the incidental characters along the way also have a decent comedic effect on them (Namely: Yaphett Kotto’s FBI man who’s had his ID, and therefore identity, snatched from him which he is forever having to chase. There is also John Ashton as fellow, yet sloppy, bounty hunter, Marvin who is forever falling folly of the people around him).

Midnight Run is a reminder to the people who saw it at the time of when a buddy movie was well produced; but it is also a reminder of when De Niro first started to toy with comedy.

A few new interviews have been conducted for this release with the likes of Grodin, Ashton and Joe Pantoliano. It’s nice to get a bit of insight into the film, but a more in depth making of would have been nice too. But for what they are worth – they are all welcome and sometimes frank interviews.

Steven Hurst