Ray Hughes (Gregory Hines) and Danny Costanzo (Billy Crystal) are cops, partners and best friends. Tired of their jobs, they decide to escape Chicago and retire to the Florida Keys.
Before they can, they have to stop a drug kingpin (Jimmy Smits) with designs on taking over the city’s underworld.
I decided to watch this movie because of a song. And that song might be the best part of the movie.
This movie works as an action film and as a showcase for Chicago as a location for said action. The car chase on the train tracks and the finale at the State building are genuinely tense and exciting.
Where it falters is as a comedy - partially, I put this down to the fact that Billy Crystal is not my kind of humour. He is genuinely unfunny in this movie, and I found myself staring past the screen during all of his bits.
But I also think the filmmakers do not know how to balance the tone.
What works about the movie is its strong sense of geography and the chemistry between Hines and Crystal - I do not like most of their banter, but they gel together so they almost get away with it.
This is where I should insert that I love the Michael McDonald song ‘Sweet Freedom’. I discovered it years ago and it always makes me happy. More than the song, the music video for the song sold me on the movie. It features McDonald, Crystal and Hines fooling around in Key West, and it is pure joy. The moment where Hines and Crystal dance together while laughing feels so much more spontaneous and exuberant than anything in the movie. I wish they had the opportunity to make another movie together, with written jokes.
It is such a strange experience watching them together. You can feel the chemistry, but all of their repartee and the characters dynamic never works.
There is a darker subtext to the movie - our heroes repeatedly use their status as cops to exert control over other people. The most ridiculous examples is Hines’ campaign to win his love interest, which involves threatening her with charges and getting her current boyfriend arrested. It is like a light-hearted fore-runner to Unlawful Entry. They also spend a ridiculous amount of time screwing with people trying to play basketball - like your typical schoolyard bullies. These guys are just assholes.
So the characters are not funny and are almost completely unsympathetic. What is left?
Honestly, if this movie threw away its attempts at humour, it probably would work as a generic but good-looking cop thriller. It definitely reads like the filmmakers were trying to replicate Beverly Hills Cop where Eddie Murphy improvised all the jokes that stil worked within a well-written action movie. This movie completely fails at replicating that magic.
It makes for an interesting experience in watching something not work but it screws up the movie.
It is worth checking out for the set pieces, but you are probably better off watching the music video for ‘Sweet Freedom’. It is the best thing to come out of Running Scared.
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