Jeremy Herbert
You can tell Running Scared isn’t a Christmas movie because nobody gives a shit. Sure, there’s a tree in the tattoo parlor where detectives Ray Hughes and Danny Costanzo pretend to ink “Born to Squeal” on a stoolie’s cheek. Eventually the cotton snow of a department store display gets dusted with the Colombian kind. It was even filmed in the coldest December on record, according to director Peter Hyams. But there are no seasons greetings and no jokes about presents from Santa, despite Danny lucking into a $50,000 inheritance. If anything, the heroes want out of their winter wonderland.
As the title song snarls in, the only color in the entire city of Chicago comes from the red of the Wrigley Field marquee and the yellow of civic transit not yet buried alive. At first, the boys don’t mind, shrugging off a stakeout to hustle a game of streetball. This is their natural, smoky, sooty, slushy habitat and they’re buddy cops – they are, for now, invincible.
So was Hyams, having just won the biggest game of chicken in cinema history by delivering a financially and critically successful sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey. MGM tried to keep the miracle worker around with a script about two middle-aged NYPD officers eying retirement, to hopefully be played by Gene Hackman and Paul Newman.
But Hyams wanted a less familiar playground and a face so fresh its film career had seemingly peaked with a one-scene cameo in This is Spinal Tap – Billy Crystal. “You could hear a thud,” the director recalled at a 25th anniversary Q&A. After an exhaustive screen test, MGM approved. Gregory Hines lobbied for Buddy #2 and seemed like a much easier choice, having already worked with Mel Brooks, William Friedkin, Francis Ford Coppola, and The Muppets by then. “Thud.” But Hyams insisted; the chemistry spoke for itself.
Costanzo and Hughes are evolutionary descendents of Keneely and Farrell, the primordial loose cannons from Hyams’s 1974 buddy cop prototype Busting. Just like their shaggier ancestors, they tweak their facial hair at authority, tease the local kingpin in broad daylight, and violate the occasional civil liberty – punching out a handcuffed perp was already a cheap laugh in 1986. But eventually they, too, fold in the face of a lenient justice system.
In Busting, that’s the impotently furious ‘70s-grade ending, as the good guys accept that the bad guys are too powerful to lose in a way that matters. In Running Scared, it’s the midpoint. After returning from an inheritance-funded sojourn to Key West to see canonical friend Michael McDonald and go halfsies on a dive bar, they find out Julio Gonzalez, their would’ve-been career-making bust and future “first Spanish Godfather of Chicago,” got off easy and now wants their wisecracking tongues for trophies.
Instead of credits, “Short-Timers Disease” rolls in, torturing the gunshy duo with alternately self-destructive and self-conscious urges to play supercop or take the only, miraculous opportunity at comfortable retirement they’ll ever get. If you squint, you can see the arms race of ‘80s action trying to kill them in real-time.
Hyams, pulling his usual double duty as cinematographer, shoots the early scenes like a comfortably gritty hang. Every interior is lit like the lineup room, with shadows down the back of whoever’s standing closest to camera. This is routine to them; we’re just watching the usual suspects over their shoulders. But then the boys get a Miami Vice makeover and, in a prescient warning of the far-off Marvel machine, Billy Crystal gets absolutely shredded – trainer Dan Isaacson would soon after work Christopher Reeves back into Kryptonian shape for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.
From there, the poor bastards just can’t catch a break. They shamefully strap on body armor, then lose their pants. They requisition a bulletproof car from the precinct Q-Branch, then skid into a Friedkin-rivaling chase on active “L” tracks. To sneak inside the State of Illinois Center, Ray has to scale all 17 stories, a simple stunt so daunting that only the building’s window washer would bite the bullet.
A year before Lethal Weapon, Hyams saw which way the wind was blowing and put his ordinary cops through extraordinary hell. The apparent ease of the comedy and anamorphic muscle of the action makes for a distinctly fizzy mix, even in a genre soon-to-be drowned with similar cocktails.
The cast is a veritable parade of That Guys, from human ulcer Dan Hedaya to Joe Pantoliano dressed like a one-hit wonder. The soundtrack was masterminded by Thriller producer Rod Temperton. It beat Riggs and Murtaugh to the punch with Black and white buddies and, to Hines’s hard-fought pride, let the former have sex. Everyone involved cared so much about it they kept various attempts at an England-set sequel, Still Running, from happening, not to mention how much they cared about each other; for the film’s 35th anniversary, Crystal admitted he keeps a copy close by: “Occasionally I’ll put it on and watch just as a way of visiting with Greg.”
But despite a handsome new Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, Running Scared still doesn’t get much respect in the grander scheme of anyone’s career, let alone the field of buddy police work. Which ultimately confirms that Running Scared is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a January movie – because nobody gives a shit.
But Costanzo’s got a point: “Regular people suck.”
“Running Scared” is streaming on several ad-based platforms and is available for digital rental or purchase, as well as on Blu-ray from KL Studio Classics.
